
Arcadia, by Thomas Eakins, c. 1883. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of Miss Adelaide Milton de Groot (1876–1967), 1967.
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Miscellany
Joseph Conrad recalled, “It was in 1868, when nine years old or thereabouts, that while looking at a map of Africa of the time and putting my finger on the blank space then representing the unsolved mystery of that continent, I said to myself, with absolute assurance and an amazing audacity which are no longer in my character now, ‘When I grow up I shall go there.’”
Grown up, and that is a terribly hard thing to do. It is much easier to skip it and go from one childhood to another.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, c. 1940