The Golden Age Original Text

And perhaps we have reason to be very grateful that, both as children and long afterwards, we are never allowed to guess how the absorbing pursuit of the moment will appear, not only to others, but to ourselves, a very short time hence. So we pass, with a gusto and a heartiness that to an onlooker would seem almost pathetic, from one droll devotion to another misshapen passion; and who shall care to play Rhadamanthus, to appraise the record, and to decide how much of it is solid achievement, and how much the merest child's play?