Page:Zangwill-King of schnorrers.djvu/285

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
271
AN ODD LIFE.
271

express passes through a petty station, full speed for the terminus. I see a panic terror close upon me with every hurrying year at the knowledge that my hours were thirty minutes and my months virtually fortnights, and that I was

"the enthusiasm of youth sicklied over with the prescience of senile cynicism."

leading the fastest life on record. Add to this the anguish of feeling myself torn from the bosom of the wife I loved and hurried away from the embraces of the children whose careers it would be my solicitude to watch over. Imagine the agony if I had been cruelly spared to my seventy-eighth