text:  But the intense appreciation of my own deficiencies in which I had been educated soon dispelled any pleasing illusions that the self-love of twenty years of age might have excited; and I fell into the opposite extreme and rejoiced to think that in me the family tree would lose its last branch and that the old house would crumble into actual ruins instead of holding forth the false appearances of solidity and strength which led to the expectation that it was still capable of repair