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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Elizabeth and her German Garden by Marie Annette Beauchamp: to find myself sick with longing. <61>
It is foolish but natural to quarrel with one's cousins,
and especially foolish and natural when they have done nothing,
and are mere victims of chance. Is it their fault that my not being a boy
placed the shoes I should otherwise have stepped into at their disposal?
I know it is not; but their blamelessness does not make me love them more.
"Noch ein dummes Frauenzimmer!" cried my father, on my arrival into the world--
he had three of them already, and I was his last hope,--and a dummes
Frauenzimmer I have remained ever since; and that is why for years I
would have no dealings with the cousins in possession, and that is why,
the other day, overcome by the tender influence of the weather,
Elizabeth and her German Garden |
