My uncle, suddenly calming down, returned to his ideas about the Bourbons; but I, still smarting from the blow of his indignation, felt an unspeakable shame. My resolve was quickly made. I promised myself never to disgrace myself—I firmly and for ever renounced that red-cheeked doll.
I felt that day, for the first time, the austere sweetness of sacrifice.
Captain, though it be true that all your life you swore like a pagan, smoked like a beadle, and drank like a bell-ringer, be your memory nevertheless honoured—not merely because you were a brave soldier, but also because you revealed to your little nephew in petticoats the sentiment of heroism! Pride and laziness had made you almost insupportable, O my Uncle Victor!—but a great heart used to beat under those frogs upon your coat. You always used to wear, I now remember, a rose in your button-hole. That rose which you allowed, as I now have reason to believe, the shop-girls to pluck for you—that, large, open-hearted flower, scattering its petals to all the winds, was the symbol of your glorious youth. You despised neither absinthe nor tobacco; but you despised life. Neither delicacy nor common sense could have been learned from you, captain; but you taught me, even at an age when my nurse had to wipe my nose, a lesson of honour and self-abnegation that I will never forget.
THOUGHTS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS
[Sidenote: Dean Swift]
We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
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The latter part of a wise man's life is taken up in curing the follies, prejudices, and false opinions he had contracted in the former.
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When a true genius appeareth in the world you may know him by this infallible sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
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