Or, as with arms outstretched and hair
streaming on the wind, he chanted full lines of the resounding Iliad,
I saw Homer pacing the Aegean sands of the Greek sunsets of forgotten
times.
"My grandmother died, and I was thrown into the world without
resources, and with no capital but my spectacles. I tried to find
employment, but everybody was shy of me. There was a vague suspicion
that I was either a little crazed, or a good deal in league with the
prince of darkness. My companions, who would persist in calling a
piece of painted muslin, a fair and fragrant flower, had no
difficulty; success waited for them around every corner, and arrived
in every ship.
"I tried to teach, for I loved children. But if anything excited a
suspicion of my pupils, and putting on my spectacles, I saw that I was
fondling a snake, or smelling at a bud with a worm in it, I sprang up
in horror and ran away; or, if it seemed to me through the glasses,
that a cherub smiled upon me, or a rose was blooming in my
button-hole, then I felt myself imperfect and impure, not fit to be
leading and training what was so essentially superior to myself, and I
kissed the children and left them weeping and wondering.
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