The Project Gutenberg EBook of Dream Days, by Kenneth Grahame

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Title: Dream Days

Author: Kenneth Grahame

Release Date: July 3, 2008 [EBook #270]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DREAM DAYS ***

Produced by Mike Lough

DREAM DAYS

By Kenneth Grahame

Contents:

THE TWENTY-FIRST OF OCTOBER
DIES IRAE
MUTABILE SEMPER
THE MAGIC RING
ITS WALLS WERE AS OF JASPER
A SAGA OF THE SEAS
THE RELUCTANT DRAGON
A DEPARTURE

DREAM DAYS

THE TWENTY-FIRST OF OCTOBER

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.

Fortunately there existed a wide range of subjects, of healthier tone
than those already enumerated, in which we were free to choose for
ourselves, and which we would have scorned to consider education; and in
these we freely followed each his own particular line, often attaining
an amount of special knowledge which struck our ignorant elders as
simply uncanny. For Edward, the uniforms, accoutrements, colours,
and mottoes of the regiments composing the British Army had a special
glamour. In the matter of facings he was simply faultless; among
chevrons, badges, medals, and stars, he moved familiarly; he