CHAPTER I
_The pains and penalties of illicit attempts to become rich: The sleep of a gamester: Morning meditations_
The pungency of extreme grief acts as a temporary opiate: for a short time it lulls the sufferer to insensibility, and sleep; but it is only to recruit him and awaken him to new torments.
When I reached my lodgings, I appeared to myself to have sunk into a state of quiescent resignation. The die was cast. My doom was irrevocable; and despair itself seemed to have lost its charm: the animation, the vigour, of misery was gone. I was reduced to an inevitable post-horse kind of endurance; and had only now to be thankful if I might be permitted to exist. From an audacious and arrogant confidence in my own strength, I had suddenly yet by perceptible gradations declined, though with excruciating pangs at every step, till I now at last found myself in a state of sluggish and brute imbecility.
Staggering home in this temper, I undressed myself, went to bed with stupid composure, and felt like a wretch that had been stretched on the rack, and, having just been taken off, was suffered to sink into lifeless languor, because he could endure no more. I was mistaken. My sleeping sensations soon became turbulent, oppressive, fevered, terrific, yet cumbrous, and impossible to awake from and escape.
It was seven in the morning, when I returned to my lodging. When I went to bed, my heaviness was so great that I seemed as if I could have slept for centuries; and, so multifarious and torturing were the images that haunted me, that, the time actually appeared indefinitely protracted: a month, a year, an age: yet it was little more than two hours. The moment struggling nature had cast off her horrible night-mares, and I had once more started into identity, the anguish of the past day and night again seized me. Pains innumerable, and intolerable, rushed upon me. Each new thought was a new serpent. Mine was the head of Medusa: with this difference; my scorpions shed all their venom inward.
Confusion of mind is the source of pain: but confusion is the greatest in minds that are the seldomest subject to it; and with those the pain is proportionably intense. The conflict was too violent to be endured, without an endeavour to get rid of it. I rose, traversed my room I know not how long, and at last rushed into the street; with a sort of feeling that, when in the open air, the atmosphere of misery that enveloped me would be swallowed up, and lost, in the infinite expanse.
The hope was vain: it wrapped me round like a cloak. It was a universal caustic, that would not endure to be touched; much less torn away. I groaned. I gnashed my teeth. I griped my hands. I struck myself violent blows. I ran with fury, in circles, in zigzag, with sudden turns and frantic bounds; and, finding myself on the banks of the Avon, plunged headlong in.
I acted from no plan, or forethought; therefore was far from any intention to drown myself; and, being in the water, I swam as I had run, like a mad or hunted bull.
That unpremeditated sensation which enforces immediate action is what, I suppose, Philosophers mean by instinct: if the word ever had any definite meaning. Thousands of these instinctive experiments are, no doubt, injurious to the animals that make them: but, their number being unlimited, some of them are successful. The benefit is remembered; they are repeated; and a future race profits by the wisdom that becomes habitual. I am well persuaded that my immersion in the stream was assuaging; and gamesters hereafter, or the faculty themselves, may, if they please, profit by the experiment.
I have no distinct recollection of coming out of the water: though I remember walking afterward, two or three hours, till my cloaths were again entirely dry. My feelings, in the interval, were somewhat similar to those of the preceding evening; declining from frantic agitation to stupidity, and torpor.
CHAPTER II
_An unexpected rencontre; and a desperate contest: Victory dearly bought_
Man is, or, which is the same thing, his sensations are, continually changing; and it may be truly affirmed that he is many different animals in the course of a day. A very unexpected, yet very natural, incident again rouzed me, to a state of activity.
During my ramble, I had strayed among the new buildings, below the Crescent. I know not whether I had any latent hope, or wish, of having a distant sight of Olivia, walking there as is customary for air and exercise: though I was certainly far too much degraded, in my own opinion, to intend being seen myself, even by her; much less by any of those proud beings, those ephemera; of fortune, with whom, while I despised their arrogance, not to associate, not to be familiar, nay not to treat with a sort of conscious superiority, was misery. We all practise that haughtiness, ourselves, which, in others, is so irritating to our feelings; and for which we pretend to have so sovereign a contempt.
As I passed a number of workmen, my moody apathy, though great, did not prevent me from hearing one of them exclaim, with a loud and suddenly angry surprize, 'By G---- that is he!'
I was at some little distance. I heard the steps of a man running speedily toward me. I turned round. He looked me full in the face; and, with no less eagerness, repeated--'Yes! D--mn me if it is not! Dick! Will! Come here! Run!'
I stood fixed. I did not recollect ever to have seen the exact figure before me; but I had a strong and instantaneously a painful impression, of the same form in a different garb. It was the man whom I had accused, the day before, of picking my pocket: the poor fellow who had been so unmercifully ducked, and ill treated, by the mob.
_The pains and penalties of illicit attempts to become rich: The sleep of a gamester: Morning meditations_
The pungency of extreme grief acts as a temporary opiate: for a short time it lulls the sufferer to insensibility, and sleep; but it is only to recruit him and awaken him to new torments.
When I reached my lodgings, I appeared to myself to have sunk into a state of quiescent resignation. The die was cast. My doom was irrevocable; and despair itself seemed to have lost its charm: the animation, the vigour, of misery was gone. I was reduced to an inevitable post-horse kind of endurance; and had only now to be thankful if I might be permitted to exist. From an audacious and arrogant confidence in my own strength, I had suddenly yet by perceptible gradations declined, though with excruciating pangs at every step, till I now at last found myself in a state of sluggish and brute imbecility.
Staggering home in this temper, I undressed myself, went to bed with stupid composure, and felt like a wretch that had been stretched on the rack, and, having just been taken off, was suffered to sink into lifeless languor, because he could endure no more. I was mistaken. My sleeping sensations soon became turbulent, oppressive, fevered, terrific, yet cumbrous, and impossible to awake from and escape.
It was seven in the morning, when I returned to my lodging. When I went to bed, my heaviness was so great that I seemed as if I could have slept for centuries; and, so multifarious and torturing were the images that haunted me, that, the time actually appeared indefinitely protracted: a month, a year, an age: yet it was little more than two hours. The moment struggling nature had cast off her horrible night-mares, and I had once more started into identity, the anguish of the past day and night again seized me. Pains innumerable, and intolerable, rushed upon me. Each new thought was a new serpent. Mine was the head of Medusa: with this difference; my scorpions shed all their venom inward.
Confusion of mind is the source of pain: but confusion is the greatest in minds that are the seldomest subject to it; and with those the pain is proportionably intense. The conflict was too violent to be endured, without an endeavour to get rid of it. I rose, traversed my room I know not how long, and at last rushed into the street; with a sort of feeling that, when in the open air, the atmosphere of misery that enveloped me would be swallowed up, and lost, in the infinite expanse.
The hope was vain: it wrapped me round like a cloak. It was a universal caustic, that would not endure to be touched; much less torn away. I groaned. I gnashed my teeth. I griped my hands. I struck myself violent blows. I ran with fury, in circles, in zigzag, with sudden turns and frantic bounds; and, finding myself on the banks of the Avon, plunged headlong in.
I acted from no plan, or forethought; therefore was far from any intention to drown myself; and, being in the water, I swam as I had run, like a mad or hunted bull.
That unpremeditated sensation which enforces immediate action is what, I suppose, Philosophers mean by instinct: if the word ever had any definite meaning. Thousands of these instinctive experiments are, no doubt, injurious to the animals that make them: but, their number being unlimited, some of them are successful. The benefit is remembered; they are repeated; and a future race profits by the wisdom that becomes habitual. I am well persuaded that my immersion in the stream was assuaging; and gamesters hereafter, or the faculty themselves, may, if they please, profit by the experiment.
I have no distinct recollection of coming out of the water: though I remember walking afterward, two or three hours, till my cloaths were again entirely dry. My feelings, in the interval, were somewhat similar to those of the preceding evening; declining from frantic agitation to stupidity, and torpor.
CHAPTER II
_An unexpected rencontre; and a desperate contest: Victory dearly bought_
Man is, or, which is the same thing, his sensations are, continually changing; and it may be truly affirmed that he is many different animals in the course of a day. A very unexpected, yet very natural, incident again rouzed me, to a state of activity.
During my ramble, I had strayed among the new buildings, below the Crescent. I know not whether I had any latent hope, or wish, of having a distant sight of Olivia, walking there as is customary for air and exercise: though I was certainly far too much degraded, in my own opinion, to intend being seen myself, even by her; much less by any of those proud beings, those ephemera; of fortune, with whom, while I despised their arrogance, not to associate, not to be familiar, nay not to treat with a sort of conscious superiority, was misery. We all practise that haughtiness, ourselves, which, in others, is so irritating to our feelings; and for which we pretend to have so sovereign a contempt.
As I passed a number of workmen, my moody apathy, though great, did not prevent me from hearing one of them exclaim, with a loud and suddenly angry surprize, 'By G---- that is he!'
I was at some little distance. I heard the steps of a man running speedily toward me. I turned round. He looked me full in the face; and, with no less eagerness, repeated--'Yes! D--mn me if it is not! Dick! Will! Come here! Run!'
I stood fixed. I did not recollect ever to have seen the exact figure before me; but I had a strong and instantaneously a painful impression, of the same form in a different garb. It was the man whom I had accused, the day before, of picking my pocket: the poor fellow who had been so unmercifully ducked, and ill treated, by the mob.
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