PROJECT ASHABI
African Stories. Limitless Worlds.
PROJECT ASHABI
African Stories. Limitless Worlds.
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A WRITER'S RECOLLECTIONS (IN TWO VOLUMES), VOLUME I
[Illustration: DR. THOMAS ARNOLD OF RUGBY]
IX. THE BEGINNINGS OF "ROBERT ELSMERE"
DR. THOMAS ARNOLD OP RUGBY _Frontispiece_
FOX HOW, THE WESTMORLAND HOME OF THE ARNOLDS
Do we all become garrulous and confidential as we approach the gates of old age? Is it that we instinctively feel, and cannot help asserting, our one advantage over the younger generation, which has so many over us?--the one advantage of _time!_
After all, it is not disputable that we have lived longer than they. When they talk of past poets, or politicians, or novelists, whom the young still deign to remember, of whom for once their estimate agrees with ours, we can sometimes put in a quiet, "I saw him"--or, "I talked with him"--which for the moment wins the conversational race. And as we elders fall back before the brilliance and glitter of the New Age, advancing "like an army with banners," this mere prerogative of years becomes in itself a precious possession. After all, we cannot divest ourselves of it, if we would. It is better to make friends with it--to turn it into a kind of _panache_--to wear it with an air, since wear it we must.
Arthur Conan Doyle
