TALKS WITH A KID BROTHER
zest and poetry and fun of living have gone never to return. But I don't intend to say anything of the sort.
If I patronize you on your ignorance of the world—and I suppose I shall—it will be on the score of your ignorance of what a very good place, on the whole, it is, this "great school of life," as your orators call it who have heard about it. And if I give you any advice—and I certainly mean to—it will be along the line of how to get as much fun as possible out of the elective and required courses you are now about to tackle.
I think you have already had your full share of "my dear young friends" talk about your solemn duty and grave responsibility as educated young men. You have had enough if not too much about the disillusionments of life, and the cruelty of the world, and the heartlessness of the bitter struggle. Every one who has talked or written about life for you from the time living and moralizing began has said pretty much the same thing about youth. Namely, that it is the time of dreams which never come true and
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