you could only look at them sideways, sank into utter insignificance. A
step had been taken from the abstract to the concrete. It was no longer
any pleasure to me to play with the smaller soldiers. I said: "They
amused me last year, when I was little." There was a similar change, a
similar picture of historic progress, when the hobby-horse on which I
had spent so many happy hours, and on which I had ridden through rooms
and passages, was put in the corner in favour of the new rocking-horse
which, long coveted and desired, was carried in through the door, and
stood in the room, rocking slightly, as though ready for the boldest
ride, the moment its rider flung himself into the saddle.

I mounted it and oh, happiness! I began to ride, and rode on with
passionate delight till I nearly went over the horse's head. "When I was
a little boy the hobby-horse amused me, but it does not now." Every time
I climbed a fresh rung of the ladder, no matter how low an one, the same
feeling possessed me, and the same train of thought. Mother often joked
about it, up to the time when I was a full grown man. If I quickly
outgrew my fancies, if I had quite done with anything or anybody that
had absorbed me a little while before, she would say, with a smile:
"Last year, when I was a little boy, the hobby-horse amused me."

Still, progress was not always smooth. When I was small I had pretty
blouses, one especially, grey, with brown worsted lace upon it, that I
was fond of wearing; now I had plain, flat blouses with a leather belt
round the waist. Later on, I was ambitious to have a jacket, like big
boys, and when this wish had been gratified there awoke in me, as
happens in life, a more lofty ambition still, that to wear a frock coat.
In the fulness of time an old frock coat of my father's was altered to
fit me. I looked thin and lank in it, but the dress was honourable. Then
it occurred to me that everybody would see I was wearing a frock coat