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 ...
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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 subjects common 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
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I love THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS, and had expected to love this book too. Instead, I found it a rather tedious bid for sympathy for the author's childhood, one in which he and his orphaned siblings were raised by aunts for whom he had enduring spite.
I have little patience with books that depict adults as the enemies of children --and the idyllic rural setting in which the orphaned children shared their childhood with their aunts sounds blissful, an invitation to imaginative play. The author's account of it makes more vivid his scorn for "the Olympians" (the aunts who offered them a comfortable home are never named) that it does the warmth that may have existed between the siblings. (it would be interesting to know if his siblings may have enjoyed those years more than did young Kenneth.)
I'd never choose to share this book with a child; it is unattractively mean-spirited. I assume his later adult life was happier, allowing us to have the book that made his name.
Were it not for the lovely illustrations, my rating would have been one star.
