Jason's commonplace book

"When I was seven or eight years old there was another domestic scene, which I can remember very clearly.  One evening before going to sleep I disregarded the rules which modesty lays down and obeyed the calls of nature in my parents’ bedroom while they were present.  In the course of his reprimand, my father let fall the words, “The boy will come to nothing.”  This must have been a frightful blow to my ambition, for references to this scene are still constantly recurring in my dreams and are always linked with an enumeration of my achievements and successes, as though I wanted to say: “You see, I have come to something."