My Young Days by Anonymous - "I want to go home!"How many times in my life, I wonder, have these words come rushing up from the very bottom of my heart, tumbling everything out of the way, never listening to reason, never stopping for thought? How many times since that dreary afternoon in the great, big drawing-room at grandmamma's? And, oh dear me! what miserable heartache comes before that fearful want! Oh, grown-up people, don't you know how sour everything tastes, and how yellow everything looks, and how sick everything makes one, when one wants to go home?So it was that one wretched day. How well I remember it all! The large, large drawing-room so full of cushions, couches, easy-chairs, little tables covered with funny knick-knacks, marble-slabs and more knick-knacks, beautiful fire-screens, large mirrors, soft fur lying about on the floor, and many-coloured antimacassars on the chairs. By and by, all these wonders had happy memories pinned on to them, of uproarious games with merry little play-fellows. Now, I was all alone, and very lonely, in it all. True, there was grandmamma nodding in her easy-chair, in the firelight, on one side, and there was Uncle Hugh reading the "Times" by the same light on the other. But what were either of them to the little tired stranger on the low stool between them? Once grandmamma's eyes had opened just to look at me, and say, "Making pretty pictures of the red coals, my dearie?"