public Freddy Ward; but the things one of them knew about differed
wholly from the objects of knowledge of the other: all of which was
splendid for giving one exactly a sense of things. It intimated more and
more how many such there would be altogether. And part of the interest
was that while Freddy gathered his among the wild wastes Edgar walked in
a regular maze of culture. I didn't then know about culture, but Edgar
must promptly have known. This impression was promoted by his moving in
a distant, a higher sphere of study, amid scenes vague to me; I dimly
descry him as appearing at Jenks's and vanishing again, as if even that
hadn't been good enough--though I may be here at fault, and indeed can
scarce say on what arduous heights I supposed him, as a day-scholar, to
dwell. I took the unknown always easily for the magnificent and was sure
only of the limits of what I saw. It wasn't that the boys swarming for
us at school were not often, to my vision, unlimited, but that those
peopling our hours of ease, as I have already noted, were almost
inveterately so--they seemed to describe always, out of view, so much
larger circles. I linger thus on Edgar by reason of its having somehow
seemed to us that he described--was it at Doctor Anthon's?--the largest
of all. If there was a bigger place than Doctor Anthon's it was there he
would have been. I break down, as to the detail of the matter, in any
push toward vaster suppositions. But let me cease to stir this
imponderable dust.
XIX
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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