(A Refrain)
"Baroja does not amount to anything, and I presume that he will never amount to anything," Ortega y Gasset observes in the first issue of the Spectator.
I have a suspicion myself that I shall never amount to anything.
Everybody who knows me has always thought the same.
When I first went to school in San Sebastian, at the age of four—and it has rained a great deal since that day—the teacher, Don León Sánchez y Calleja, who made a practice of thrashing us with a very stiff pointer (oh, these hallowed traditions of our ancestors!), looked me over and said:
"This boy will prove to be as sulky as his brother. He will never amount to anything."
I studied for a time in the Institute of Pamplona with Don Gregorio Pano, who taught us mathematics; and this old gentleman, who looked like the Commander in Don Juan Tenorio, with his frozen face and his white beard, remarked to me in his sepulchral voice:
"You are not going to be an engineer like your father. You will never amount to anything."
When I took therapeutics under Don Benito Hernando in San Carlos, Don
Benito planted himself in front of me and said:
"That smile of yours, that little smile … it is impertinent. Don't you come to me with any of your satirical smiles. You will never amount to anything, unless it is negative and useless."
I shrugged my shoulders.