No society in the world is under so oppressive a
taboo. They must not speak of anything emotional or intellectual, at
the cost of being thought a fool or a prig. They talk about games,
they gossip about boys and masters, sometimes their conversation is
nasty and bestial. But it conceals very real if very fitful
emotions; yet it is impossible to recall or to reconstruct; and when
older people attempt to reconstruct it, they remember the emotions
which underlay it, and the eager interests out of which it all
sprang; and they make it something picturesque, epigrammatic, and
vernacular which is wholly untrue to life. The fact is that the talk
of schoolboys is very trivial and almost wholly symbolical; emotion
reveals itself in glance and gesture, not in word at all. I suppose
that most of us remember our boyish friendships, ardent and eager
personal admirations, extraordinary deifications of quite
commonplace boys, emotions none of which were ever put into words at
all, hardly even into coherent thought, and were yet a swift and
vital current of the soul.
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