Original (English)

And my father pushed aside his books. O young reader, whoever thou art,--or reader at least who hast been young,--canst thou not remember some time when, with thy wild troubles and sorrows as yet borne in secret, thou hast come back from that hard, stern world which opens on thee when thou puttest thy foot out of the threshold of home,--come back to the four quiet walls wherein thine elders sit in peace,--and seen, with a sort of sad amaze, how calm and undisturbed all is there? That generation