At school he was equally remarkable, and at a tender age he received a
paper adorned with a cut, inscribed REWARD OF MERIT."
--I don't doubt the nurse said that,--there were several promising
children born about that time. As for cuts, I got more from the
schoolmaster's rattan than in any other shape. Didn't one of my teachers
split a Gunter's scale into three pieces over the palm of my hand? And
didn't I grin when I saw the pieces fly? No humbug, now, about my
boyhood!
"His personal appearance was not singularly prepossessing. Inconspicuous
in stature and unattractive in features."
--You misbegotten son of an ourang and grandson of an ascidian (ghosts
keep up with science, you observe), what business have you to be holding
up my person to the contempt of my posterity? Haven't I been sleeping
for this many a year in quiet, and don't the dandelions and buttercups
look as yellow over me as over the best-looking neighbor I have in the
dormitory? Why do you want to people the minds of everybody that reads
your good-for-nothing libel which you call a "biography" with your
impudent caricatures of a man who was a better-looking fellow than
yourself, I 'll bet you ten to one, a man whom his Latin tutor called
fommosus puer when he was only a freshman? If that's what it means to
make a reputation,--to leave your character and your person, and the good
name of your sainted relatives, and all you were, and all you had and
thought and felt, so far as can be gathered by digging you out of your
most private records, to be manipulated and bandied about and cheapened
in the literary market as a chicken or a turkey or a goose is handled and
bargained over at a provision stall, is n't it better to be content with
the honest blue slate-stone and its inscription informing posterity that
you were a worthy citizen and a respected father of a family?
--I should like to see any man's biography with corrections and
emendations by his ghost.
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