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235
The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft
·
George Gissing
84
IX.
I
read
much
less
than
I
used
to
do;
I
think
much
more.
Yet
what
is
the
use
of
thought
which
can
no
longer
serve
to
direct
life?
Better,
perhaps,
to
read
and
read
incessantly,
losing
one's
futile
self
in
the
activity
of
other
minds.
This
summer
I
have
taken
up
no
new
book,
but
have
renewed
my
acquaintance
with
several
old
ones
which
I
had
not
opened
for
many
a
year.
One
or
two
have
been
books
such
as
mature
men
rarely
read
at
all--books
which
it
is
one's
habit
to
"take
as
read";
to
presume
sufficiently
known
to
speak
of,
but
never
to
open.
Thus,
one
day
my
hand
fell
upon
the
Anabasis,
the
little
Oxford
edition
which
I
used
at
school,
with
its
boyish
sign-manual
on
the
fly-leaf,
its
blots
and
underlinings
and
marginal
scrawls.
To
my
shame
I
possess
no
other
edition;
yet
this
is
a
book
one
would
like
to
have
in
beautiful
form.
I
opened
it,
I
began
to
read--a
ghost
of
boyhood
stirring
in
my
heart--and
from
chapter
to
chapter
was
led
on,
until
after
a
few
days
I
had
read
the
whole.
I
am
glad
this
happened
in
the
summer-time,
I
like
to
link
childhood
with
these
latter
days,
and
no
better
way
could
I
have
found
than
this
return
to
a
school-book,
which,
even
as
a
school-book,
was
my
great
delight.
By
some
trick
of
memory
I
always
associate
school-boy
work
on
the
classics
with
a
sense
of
warm
and
sunny
days;
rain
and
gloom
and
a
chilly
atmosphere
must
have
been
far
the
more
frequent
conditions,
but
these
things
are
forgotten.
My
old
Liddell
and
Scott
still
serves
me,
and
if,
in
opening
it,
I
bend
close
enough
to
catch
the
scent
of
the
leaves,
I
am
back
again
at
that
day
of
boyhood
(noted
on
the
fly-leaf
by
the
hand
of
one
long
dead)
when
the
book
was
new
and
I
used
it
for
the
first
time.
It
was
a
day
of
summer,
and
perhaps
there
fell
upon
the
unfamiliar
page,
viewed
with
childish
tremor,
half
apprehension
and
half
delight,
a
mellow
sunshine,
which
was
to
linger
for
ever
in
my
mind.
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