文档介绍：DREAM DAYS
DREAM DAYS
BY H GRAHAME
1
DREAM DAYS
THE TWENTY-FIRST OF
OCTOBER
In the matter of general culture and attainments, we youngsters stood
on pretty level ground. True, it was always happening that one of us
would be singled out at any moment, freakishly, and without regard to his
own preferences, to wrestle with the inflections of some idiotic language
long rightly dead; while another, from some fancied artistic tendency
which always failed to justify itself, might be told off without warning to
hammer out scales and exercises, and to bedew the senseless keys with
tears of weariness or of revolt. But in mon to either sex, and
held to be necessary even for him whose ambition soared no higher than to
crack a whip in a circus-ring-- in geography, for instance, arithmetic, or
the weary doings of kings and queens--each would have scorned to excel.
And, indeed, whatever our individual gifts, a general dogged
determination to shirk and to evade kept us all at much the same dead
level,--a level of ignorance tempered by insubordination.
Fortunately there existed a wide range of subjects, of healthier tone
than those already enumerated, in which we were free to choose for
ourselves, and which we would have scorned to consider education; and in
these we freely followed each his own particular line, often attaining an
amount of special knowledge which struck our ignorant elders as simply
uncanny. For Edward, the uniforms, accoutrements, colours, and mottoes
of the posing the British Army had a special glamour. In
the matter of facings he was simply faultless; among chevrons, badges,
medals, and stars, he moved familiarly; he even knew the names of most
of the colonels mand; and he would squander sunny hours prone on
the lawn, heedless of challenge from bird or beast, poring over a tattered
Army List. My own plishment was of another character--took, as
it seemed to me, a wider and a more untrammelled range. Dragoons
might have swag