Life passes by.
The doors of Pain and Pleasure open wide,
The crowd streams in--and I am left outside. ...
They know; not I.
[You don't like it? Neither did her Mother.]
MOTHER (looking up from her work). Yes, I should call that a
melancholy song, dear.
DAUGHTER. It is sung by a melancholy person, Mother.
MOTHER. Why are you that, child?
DAUGHTER (getting up). I want so much that I shall never have.
MOTHER. Well, so do we all.
DAUGHTER (impatiently). Oh, why does nothing ever happen? We sit
here all day, and we sing or do our embroidery, and we go to bed,
and the next day we get up and do the same things over again, and
so it goes on. Mother, is that all there is in the world?
MOTHER. It's all there is in our world.
DAUGHTER. Are we so very poor?
MOTHER. We have the house--and very little else.
DAUGHTER. Oh, I wish that we were _really_ poor--
MOTHER. You needn't wish, child.
DAUGHTER. Oh, but I mean so that it wouldn't matter what clothes
we wore; so that we could wander over the hills and down into the
valleys, and sleep perhaps in a barn and bathe ourselves in the
brook next morning, and--
MOTHER. I don't think I should like that very much. Perhaps I'm
peculiar.
DAUGHTER. Oh, if only I were a boy to go out and make my own
way in the world.
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