The Story of a Child

CHAPTER LXXXI.

I will end these reminiscences here, because what follows is not yet distant enough from me to be submitted to the unknown reader. And besides it seems to me that my childhood really came to an end upon the day in which I announced my decision in regard to my future.

I was then fourteen and a half years of age, and that gave me, therefore, three years and a half in which to prepare myself for the naval academy, consequently I had time to do it thoroughly and properly.

But in the meantime I had to encounter many refusals and all sorts of difficulties before my admittance to the Borda. And later I lived through many troublous years; years replete with struggles and mistakes,—I had many a Calvary to climb; I had to pay cruelly and in full for having been reared a sensitive, shy little creature, by force of will I had to recast and harden my physical as well as my moral being. One day, when I was about twenty-seven years of age, a circus director, after having seen my muscles that then had the elasticity and strength of steel, gave utterance, in his admiration, to the truest words I have ever had addressed to me: “What a pity, sir,” he said, “that your education commenced so late!”