Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder
American Day Dream
Biblis painting
Boulevard des Capucines
A blank, through which the warriors of poetry and history march on in stately hosts that seem to have no end - and what comes next! I am the head-boy, now! I look down on the line of boys below me, with a condescending interest in such of them as bring to my mind the boy I was myself, when I first came there. That little fellow seems to be no part of me; I remember him as something left behind upon the road of life - as something I have passed, rather than have actually been - and almost think of him as of someone else. ¡¡¡¡And the little girl I saw on that first day at Mr. Wickfield's, where is she? Gone also. In her stead, the perfect likeness of the picture, a child likeness no more, moves about the house; and Agnes - my sweet sister, as I call her in my though
oil paintingts, my counsellor and friend, the better angel of the lives of all who come within her calm, good, self-denying influence - is quite a woman. ¡¡¡¡What other changes have come upon me, besides the changes in my growth and looks, and in the knowledge I have garnered all this while? I wear a gold watch and chain, a ring upon my little finger, and a long-tailed coat; and I use a great deal of bear's grease - which, taken in conjunction with the ring, looks bad. Am I in love again? I am. I worship the eldest Miss Larkins. ¡¡¡¡The eldest Miss Larkins is not a little girl. She is a tall, dark, black-eyed, fine figure of a woman. The eldest Miss Larkins is not a chicken; for the youngest Miss Larkins is not that, and the eldest must be three or four years older. Perhaps the eldest Miss Larkins may be about thirty. My passion for her is beyond all bounds.