The Great Gatsby
Chapter One
In my younger and more vulnerable years my
father gave me some advice that I've been
turning over in my mind ever since.
"Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone," he
told me, "just remember that all the people in
this world haven't had the advantages that
you've had."
He didn't say any more but we've always been
unusually communicative in a reserved way and I
understood that he meant a great deal more than
that. In consequence I'm inclined to reserve all
judgements, a habit that has opened up many
curious natures to me and also made me the
victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal
mind is quick to detect and attach itself to
this quality when it appears in a normal person,
and so it came about that in college I was
unjustly accused of being a politician, because
I was privy to the secret griefs of wild,
unknown men. Most of the confidences were
unsought - frequently I have feigned sleep,
preoccupation or a hostile levity when I
realized by some unmistakable sign that an
intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon
- for the intimate revelations of young men or
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