MARK TWAIN ON LOST YOUTH
Ah, the dreams of our youth, how beautiful they are, and how perishable! The ruins of these might-have-beens, how pathetic! The heart-secrets that were revealed that night now so long vanished, how they touch me as I give them voice! Those sweet privacies, how they endeared us to each other! We were under oath never to tell any of these things, and I have always kept that oath inviolate when speaking with persons whom I thought not worthy to hear them. Oh, our lost youth – God keep its memory green in our hearts! for age is upon us, with the indignity of its infirmities, and death beckons! From My Boyhood Dreams, by Mark Twain, 1900
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