FROM the first moment I sat down to write my life for the amusement of
the world, and my opinions for its instruction, has a cloud insensibly
been gathering over my father.——A tide of little evils and distresses
has been setting in against him.—Not one thing, as he observed himself,
has gone right: and now is the storm thicken’d and going to break, and
pour down full upon his head.
I enter upon this part of my story in the most pensive and melancholy
frame of mind that ever sympathetic breast was touched with.——My nerves
relax as I tell it.——Every line I write, I feel an abatement of the
quickness of my pulse, and of that careless alacrity with it, which
every day of my life prompts me to say and write a thousand things I
should not——And this moment that I last dipp’d my pen into my ink, I
could not help taking notice what a cautious air of sad composure and
solemnity there appear’d in my manner of doing it.——Lord! how different
from the rash jerks and hair-brain’d squirts thou art wont, _Tristram_,
to transact it with in other humours—dropping thy pen——spurting thy ink
about thy table and thy books—as if thy pen and thy ink, thy books and
furniture cost thee nothing!