Dream Days

In the issue of general culture and attainments we children stood on quite even footing. True it was always the case that one of us would be picked at random inexplicably and without regard to his own preferences to struggle with the inflections of some idiotic language that was long since dead; meanwhile another from some fancied artistic tendency that always failed to justify itself might be told off without warning to hammer out scales and exercises and to bedew the pointless keys with wet tears of exhaustion or indignation. However neither would have cared to be the best in areas that were common to both sexes and considered important even for someone whose ambitions did not go beyond cracking whips in circus rings such as geography mathematics or the tiresome activities of kings and queens. Indeed despite the differences in our individual talents we were all held at a largely similar dead level—one of ignorance tempered by disobedience.