But it is wrong that any of these
climbers should kick the ladder by which they have climbed. But indeed
these bitter people who record their experiences really record their lack
of experiences. It is the countryman who has not succeeded in being a
countryman who comes up to London. It is the clerk who has not succeeded
in being a clerk who tries (on vegetarian principles) to be a countryman.
And the woman with a past is generally a woman angry about the past she
never had.
When you have really exhausted an experience you always reverence and love
it. The two things that nearly all of us have thoroughly and really been
through are childhood and youth. And though we would not have them back
again on any account, we feel that they are both beautiful, because we
have drunk them dry.
THE ANGRY AUTHOR: HIS FAREWELL
I have republished all these old articles of mine because they cover a
very controversial period, in which I was in nearly all the controversies,
whether I was visible there or no. And I wish to gather up into this last
article a valedictory violence about all such things; and then pass to
where, beyond these voices, there is peace--or in other words, to the
writing of Penny Dreadfuls; a noble and much-needed work.
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