THEY say that a child's childhood is the happiest time of its life!
Mine isn't.
For it is nice to do as you like even if it isn't good for you. It is nice to overeat yourself even though it does make you ill afterwards. It is a positive pleasure to go out and do something that catches you a cold, if you want to, and to leave off your winter clothes a month too soon. Children hate feeling "stuffy" - no grown-up person understands that feeling that makes you wriggle and twist till you get sent to bed. It is nice to go to bed when you are sleepy, and no sooner, not to be despatched any time that grown-up people are tired of you and take the quickest way to get rid of a nuisance. Taken all round, the very nicest thing in the world is your own way and plenty of it, and you never get that properly, it seems to me, until you are too old to enjoy it, or too cross to admit that you do!
I suspect that the word "rice-pudding" will be written on my heart, as Calais was on Bloody Mary's, when I am dead.
I have got that blue shade about the eyes that they say early-dying children have, and I may die young. So I am going to write down everything, just as it happens, in my life, because when I grow up, I mean to be an author, like my father before me, and teach in song, or in prose, what I have learned in suffering. Doing this will get me insensibly into the habit of composition. George - my father - we always call him by his Christian name by request - offered to look it over for me, but I do not think that I shall avail myself of his kindness. I want to be quite honest, and set down everything, in malice, as grown-up people do, and then your book is sure to be amusing. I shall say the worst - I mean the truth - about everybody, including myself. That is what makes a book saleable. People don't like to be put off with short commons in scandal, and chuck the book into the fire at once as I have seen George do, when the writer is too discreet. My book will not be discreet, but crisp, and gossippy. Even Ariadne must not read it, however much of my hair and its leaves she pulls out, for she will claw me in her rage, of course. Grammar and spelling will not be made a specialty of, because what you gain in propriety you lose in originality and verve. I do adore verve!
George's own style is said to be the perfection of nervousness and vervousness. He is a genius, he admits it. I am proud, but not glad, for it cuts both ways, and it is hardly likely that there will be two following after each other so soon in the same family. Though one never knows? Mozart's father was a musical man. George says that to be daughter to such a person is a liberal education; it seems about all the education I am likely to get! George teaches me Greek and Latin, when he has time. He won't touch Ariadne, for she isn't worth it. He says I am apt. Dear me, one may as well make lessons a pleasure, instead of a scene! Ariadne cried the first time at Perspective, when George, after a long explanation that puzzled her, asked her in that particular, sniffy, dried-up tone teachers put on, - "Did she see?" And when he asked me, I didn't see either, but I said I did, to prevent unpleasantness.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Mine isn't.
For it is nice to do as you like even if it isn't good for you. It is nice to overeat yourself even though it does make you ill afterwards. It is a positive pleasure to go out and do something that catches you a cold, if you want to, and to leave off your winter clothes a month too soon. Children hate feeling "stuffy" - no grown-up person understands that feeling that makes you wriggle and twist till you get sent to bed. It is nice to go to bed when you are sleepy, and no sooner, not to be despatched any time that grown-up people are tired of you and take the quickest way to get rid of a nuisance. Taken all round, the very nicest thing in the world is your own way and plenty of it, and you never get that properly, it seems to me, until you are too old to enjoy it, or too cross to admit that you do!
I suspect that the word "rice-pudding" will be written on my heart, as Calais was on Bloody Mary's, when I am dead.
I have got that blue shade about the eyes that they say early-dying children have, and I may die young. So I am going to write down everything, just as it happens, in my life, because when I grow up, I mean to be an author, like my father before me, and teach in song, or in prose, what I have learned in suffering. Doing this will get me insensibly into the habit of composition. George - my father - we always call him by his Christian name by request - offered to look it over for me, but I do not think that I shall avail myself of his kindness. I want to be quite honest, and set down everything, in malice, as grown-up people do, and then your book is sure to be amusing. I shall say the worst - I mean the truth - about everybody, including myself. That is what makes a book saleable. People don't like to be put off with short commons in scandal, and chuck the book into the fire at once as I have seen George do, when the writer is too discreet. My book will not be discreet, but crisp, and gossippy. Even Ariadne must not read it, however much of my hair and its leaves she pulls out, for she will claw me in her rage, of course. Grammar and spelling will not be made a specialty of, because what you gain in propriety you lose in originality and verve. I do adore verve!
George's own style is said to be the perfection of nervousness and vervousness. He is a genius, he admits it. I am proud, but not glad, for it cuts both ways, and it is hardly likely that there will be two following after each other so soon in the same family. Though one never knows? Mozart's father was a musical man. George says that to be daughter to such a person is a liberal education; it seems about all the education I am likely to get! George teaches me Greek and Latin, when he has time. He won't touch Ariadne, for she isn't worth it. He says I am apt. Dear me, one may as well make lessons a pleasure, instead of a scene! Ariadne cried the first time at Perspective, when George, after a long explanation that puzzled her, asked her in that particular, sniffy, dried-up tone teachers put on, - "Did she see?" And when he asked me, I didn't see either, but I said I did, to prevent unpleasantness.
Genre: Literary Fiction
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