Still I feel
that the little narrative I am about to put together may do some good
to some few people who may be suffering. I know that the roughest and
dullest book ever written, had it contained a similar relation to this
of mine, would have brought balm to my mind and hope to my heart not
many years ago. And who knows but that other men (for the scenes of
this world, and its good and evil, are very much alike), may be
suffering as I did, and may therefore be influenced by my rude
scribbling, as I might have been by some of theirs?
"There was a time, and not a very distant one either, when I was
utterly ignorant of two things--first, the existence, in my particular
case, of the thing called the human stomach; and secondly, the reality
of those mysterious telegraphic wires--yclept NERVES. Often nave I
sneered at 'bilious subjects,' 'dyspepsia,' and that long string of
woes which one hears of, in such luxuriance of description, usually
over breakfast, at Clifton, Tonbridge, or Harrogate. Like the old
Duchess of Marlborough, too, I used 'to thank God I was born before
nerves came into fashion.'
"But 'live and learn.' I have lived; and I have learnt the utter misery
which a deranged digestion and jarring nerves, acting and reacting upon
each other, can inflict upon their victims.
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