All that the University professor can urge in favour of idealism I am prepared to endorse.But then I am--let us say,thirty-nine.At fourteen my candid opinion was that he was talking "rot."I looked at the old gentleman himself--a narrow-chested,spectacled old gentleman,who lived up a by street.He did not seem to have much fun of any sort.It was not my ideal.He told me things had been written in a language called Greek that I should enjoy reading,but Ihad not even read all Captain Marryat.There were tales by Sir Walter Scott and "Jack Harkaway's Schooldays!"I felt I could wait a while.There was a chap called Aristophanes who had written comedies,satirising the political institutions of a country that had disappeared two thousand years ago.I say,without shame,Drury Lane pantomime and Barnum's Circus called to me more strongly.
Wishing to give the old gentleman a chance,I dipped into translations.Some of these old fellows were not as bad as I had imagined them.A party named Homer had written some really interesting stuff.Here and there,maybe,he was a bit long-winded,but,taking him as a whole,there was "go"in him.There was another of them--Ovid was his name.He could tell a story,Ovid could.He had imagination.He was almost as good as "Robinson Crusoe."Ithought it would please my professor,telling him that I was reading these,his favourite authors.
"Reading them!"he cried,"but you don't know Greek or Latin.""But I know English,"I answered;"they have all been translated into English.You never told me that!"It appeared it was not the same thing.There were subtle delicacies of diction bound to escape even the best translator.These subtle delicacies of diction I could enjoy only by devoting the next seven or eight years of my life to the study of Greek and Latin.It will grieve the University professor to hear it,but the enjoyment of those subtle delicacies of diction did not appear to me--I was only fourteen at the time,please remember--to be worth the time and trouble.
The boy is materially inclined--the mourning American professor has discovered it.I did not want to be an idealist living up a back street.I wanted to live in the biggest house in the best street of the town.I wanted to ride a horse,wear a fur coat,and have as much to eat and drink as ever I liked.I wanted to marry the most beautiful woman in the world,to have my name in the newspaper,and to know that everybody was envying me.
Mourn over it,my dear professor,as you will--that is the ideal of youth;and,so long as human nature remains what it is,will continue to be so.It is a materialistic ideal--a sordid ideal.Maybe it is necessary.Maybe the world would not move much if the young men started thinking too early.They want to be rich,so they fling themselves frenziedly into the struggle.They build the towns,and make the railway tracks,hew down the forests,dig the ore out of the ground.There comes a day when it is borne in upon them that trying to get rich is a poor sort of game--that there is only one thing more tiresome than being a millionaire,and that is trying to be a millionaire.But,meanwhile,the world has got its work done.