I need not repeat how thoroughly I was sustained and
comforted by the assiduity of one of the best of women. I tried to
thank her by making light of my many miseries.
"This sort of life was, however, too great and continued a strain for a
rickety machine to last. And at times, when I gave way to those strange
thoughts about the use and end of human existence, which crowd upon the
mind in nervous disease--it seemed to me as if I could weigh and
measure the particles of vitality from my daily diminishing store--
expended in each unnatural effort of labour--as if every stroke of my
business craft represented so much of that daily shortening distance
which lay between me and the end. I felt the price I was paying for the
privilege of labour, and for its remuneration. But I thought, ever, of
my wife and little babies, and the thought roused me to a kind of
desperation, and made me feel for the time as if I could trample
weakness under foot, and tear out, break in pieces, and cast away those
miserable, oversensitive organs, which chained, cramped, and hindered
me. I like work, too. And I had a sort of shame of confessing myself
incapable. I morbidly derided the sympathising regret likely to be
shown by my friends, and I pictured the moribund predictions likely to
follow a temporary desertion of my post.
Pages:
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371