used hard words 
to each other, and parted so that you would rather 
meet Beelzebub than her/* 

" Why, yes, it is so : I would rather meet twenty 
Beelzebubs than her." 

"That is the way of you boys. You don't know 
that in after years, when all these  have got 
smooth and misty and distant, you will come to l2(e 
her again; and what will you think then of your 
hard words and your quarrels ? If you children could 
only understand how very short youth is, how very 
long middle age is, and how very dull old age is,  ^if 
you could only understand how the chief occupation 
of the longer half of your life is looking back on the 
first short half of it,  ^you would know the value of 
storing up only pleasant recollections of all your old 
Menda If you find that your sweetheart is a woman 
compelled by her nature to fall in wordnetdesire with the man 
nearest her, and forget him who is out of the way, 
why devote her to the infernal gods ? In after years, 
you will be grateful to her for the pleasant days and 
weeks you spent with her, when you were both happy 
together, and you will look back on the old times 
very tenderly; and then, on those occasions when 
you