A Childhood (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from A Childhood<br><br>I do not know the author of this book, and I have, as a rule, a strong feeling against books that tell no continuous story. Yet it has interested me greatly, both because of the skill and faithfulness with which the scattered memories are recorded, and because it somehow reads like the proem to something sterner and sadder. Memories of childhood draw most of their magic from some incompleteness of this sort. They seem like the random play of eddies in a wide river that will hereafter gather to a cataract, significant because greater things are coming, and pathetic because they give no sign what those greater things will be. The randomness of childhood is well represented here; also its sense of a mysterious life in lifeless things, its terrors and its heartlessness; and the eternal mockery of the poor "grown-ups" in the background, vexing their hearts with love and care for the children, and succeeding only in becoming a well-recognized nuisance, useful as a protection against still greater calamities, though always checking and marring the current of true life.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.