CHAPTER XLV
SOME people say that their school days were the happiest of their
lives. They may be right, but I always look with suspicion upon
those whom I hear saying this. It is hard enough to know whether one
is happy or unhappy now, and still harder to compare the relative
happiness or unhappiness of different times of one's life; the
utmost that can be said is that we are fairly happy so long as we
are not distinctly aware of being miserable. As I was talking with
Ernest one day not so long since about this, he said he was so happy
now that he was sure he had never been happier, and did not wish to be
so, but that Cambridge was the first place where he had ever been
consciously and continuously happy.
How can any boy fail to feel an ecstasy of pleasure on first finding
himself in rooms which he knows for the next few years are to be his
castle? Here he will not be compelled to turn out of the most
comfortable place as soon as he has ensconced himself in it because
papa or mamma happens to come into the room, and he should give it
up to them. The most cosy chair here is for himself, there is no one
even to share the room with him, or to interfere with his doing as
he likes in it- smoking included.
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