You say, my dear Anushka, that you have nothing but your dreams; you are full of dreams; drunk every day with ideals. And you speak of this as if it were a weakness, something to be ashamed of.  
You are young. All your years slant upward. Before you life stretches out as a vast untried adventure. Love is yet to come, and success, and a career. Let me, who am over the hillcrest and on the westering slope, talk to you a bit.
 
And looking back on all that I have had and felt and lived, let me say to you that the best of all was the dream. Not what I got but what I longed for, not what I attained 119 unto but what I aimed at, these are my harvest, my treasures.
 
I fished in the sea, but the biggest fish got away. I hunted in the wood, but the brightest birds, the fleetest deer, were those I glimpsed and saw as they vanished.
 
The things I have seen, gazed at with full vision, were cheap and tawdry compared to those that flashed by and were caught only by the tail of my eye.
 
What I have done is a poor compromise. What I dreamed of doing was wonderful. I have composed music such as the angels might covet to sing. I have painted pictures, carved statues, built palaces, such as no hands of flesh could accomplish.
 
I have said words that broke hearts with their infinite tragedy, and healed them again with their divine accent of consolation. I have written books that swayed the world’s 120 heart as the summer wind bends the wheat-field.
 
But it was all in t............