'If you could say, with truth, to your own solitary heart, to-night, "I have secured myself the love and attachment, the gratitude or respect, of no human creature; I have won myself a tender place in no regard; I have done nothing good or serviceable to be remembered by!" your seventy-eight years would be seventy-eight heavy curses; would they not?'
'You say truly, Mr Carton; I think they would be.'
Sydney turned his eyes again upon the fire, and, after a silence of a few moments, said:
'I should like to ask you: Does your childhood seem far off? Do the days when you say at your mother's knee, seem days of very long ago?'
Responding to his softened manner, Mr Lorry answered:
'Twenty years back, yes; at this time of my life, no. For, as I draw closer and closer to the end, I travel in the circle, nearer and nearer to the beginning. It seems to be one of the kind smoothings and preparings of the way. My heart is touched now, by many remembrances that had long fallen asleep, of my pretty young mother (and I so old!), and by many associations of the days when what we call the World was not so real with me, and my faults were not confirmed in me.' (Dickens III.9)
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