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The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft
·
George Gissing
28
X.
Mentally
and
physically,
I
must
be
much
older
than
my
years.
At
three-
and-fifty
a
man
ought
not
to
be
brooding
constantly
on
his
vanished
youth.
These
days
of
spring
which
I
should
be
enjoying
for
their
own
sake,
do
but
turn
me
to
reminiscence,
and
my
memories
are
of
the
springs
that
were
lost.
Some
day
I
will
go
to
London
and
revisit
all
the
places
where
I
housed
in
the
time
of
my
greatest
poverty.
I
have
not
seen
them
for
a
quarter
of
a
century
or
so.
Not
long
ago,
had
any
one
asked
me
how
I
felt
about
these
memories,
I
should
have
said
that
there
were
certain
street
names,
certain
mental
images
of
obscure
London,
which
made
me
wretched
as
often
as
they
came
before
me;
but,
in
truth,
it
is
a
very
long
time
since
I
was
moved
to
any
sort
of
bitterness
by
that
retrospect
of
things
hard
and
squalid.
Now,
owning
all
the
misery
of
it
in
comparison
with
what
should
have
been,
I
find
that
part
of
life
interesting
and
pleasant
to
look
back
upon--greatly
more
so
than
many
subsequent
times,
when
I
lived
amid
decencies
and
had
enough
to
eat.
Some
day
I
will
go
to
London,
and
spend
a
day
or
two
amid
the
dear
old
horrors.
Some
of
the
places,
I
know,
have
disappeared.
I
see
the
winding
way
by
which
I
went
from
Oxford
Street,
at
the
foot
of
Tottenham
Court
Road,
to
Leicester
Square,
and,
somewhere
in
the
labyrinth
(I
think
of
it
as
always
foggy
and
gas-lit)
was
a
shop
which
had
pies
and
puddings
in
the
window,
puddings
and
pies
kept
hot
by
steam
rising
through
perforated
metal.
How
many
a
time
have
I
stood
there,
raging
with
hunger,
unable
to
purchase
even
one
pennyworth
of
food!
The
shop
and
the
street
have
long
since
vanished;
does
any
man
remember
them
so
feelingly
as
I?
But
I
think
most
of
my
haunts
are
still
in
existence:
to
tread
again
those
pavements,
to
look
at
those
grimy
doorways
and
purblind
windows,
would
affect
me
strangely.
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