Perhaps the saddest lines in poetry, written by a man who could make
things new for the gods themselves.

If you want to avoid being like Burns there are several possible ways.
Thus you might copy us, as we shine forth in our published memoirs,
practically without a flaw. No one so obscure nowadays but that he
can have a book about him. Happy the land that can produce such
subjects for the pen.

But do not put your photograph at all ages into your autobiography.
That may bring you to the ground. 'My Life; and what I have done
with it'; that is the sort of title, but it is the photographs that
give away what you have done with it. Grim things, those portraits;
if you could read the language of them you would often find it
unnecessary to read the book. The face itself, of course,
is still more tell-tale, for it is the record of all one's past
life. There the man stands in the dock, page by page; we ought
to be able to see each chapter of him melting into the next
like the figures in the cinematograph. Even the youngest of you
has got through some chapters already. When you go home for the
next vacation someone is sure to say 'John has changed a little;
I don't quite see in what way, but he has changed.' You remember
they said that last vacation. Perhaps it means that you look less
like your father. Think that out. I could say some nice things
of your betters if I chose.

In youth you tend to look rather frequently into a mirror, not at
all necessarily from vanity. You say to yourself, 'What an
interesting face; I wonder what he is to be up to?' Your elders