Certain Personal Matters by H.G. Wells — Read

I do not know if you remember your "dates. " Indeed, I do not know if anyone does. My own memory is of a bridge; like that bridge of Goldsmith's, standing firm and clear on its hither piers and then passing into a cloud. In the beginning of days was "William the Conqueror, 1066," and the path lay safe and open to Henry the Second; then came Titanic forms of kings, advancing and receding, elongating and dwindling, exchanging dates, losing dates, stealing dates from battles and murders and great enactments -- even inventing dates, vacant years that were really no dates at all. The things I have suffered -- prisons, scourgings, beating with rods, wild masters, in bounds often, a hundred lines often, standing on forms and holding out books often -- on account of these dates! I knew, and knew well before I was fifteen, what these "heredity" babblers are only beginning to discover -- that the past is the curse of the present. But I never knew my dates -- never.

And I marvel now that all little boys do not grow up to be Republicans, seeing how much they suffer for the mere memory of Kings.