Nor Could He Send Us To Town, Where There
Was But One English School For Boys, Run By A Weak, Sickly Gentleman,
Whose House Was A Nest Of Fevers And Every Sort Of Ailment Incidental
To Boys Herded Together In An Unhealthy Boarding-School.
Prosperous
English people sent their children home to be educated at that time,
but it was enormously expensive and we were not well off enough.
A
little later an exception had to be made in the case of my elder
brother, who would not settle down to sheep-farming or any other
occupation out on the pampas, but had set his heart on pursuing his
studies abroad.
At this period of my life this brother was so important a person to me
that I shall have to give even more space to him in this chapter than
he had in the last one. Yet of my brothers he was not the one nearest
to my heart. He was five full years my senior, and naturally
associated with an elder brother, while we two smaller ones were left
to amuse ourselves together in our own childish way. With a younger
brother for only playmate, I prolonged my childhood, and when I was
ten my brother of fifteen appeared a young man to me. We were all four
extremely unlike in character as well as appearance, and alike in one
thing only - the voice, inherited from our father; but just as our
relationship appeared in that one physical character, so I think that
under all the diversities in our minds and temperaments there was a
hidden quality, a something of the spirit, which made us one; and
this, I believe, came from the mother's side.
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