Is strange. Granted; don't draw back; come, a cordial gripe. We are
friends; we have both suffered from the same cause. There, that's
right--honest palm to palm. Now, how say you--have you ever wanted twenty
pounds?
READER.--Frankly, then, I have.
Mind to mind, as hand to hand. Have you felt as I did? Did its want cloud
the sun, wither the grass, and blight the bud?
READER.--It did.
But how, marry, how? What! you decline confession--so you may--I'll be
more explicit. I was abroad, far from my "father-land"--there's a magic in
the word!--the turf we've played on, the hearts we love, the graves we
venerate--all, all combine to concentrate its charm.
READER.--You are digressing.
Thank you, I am; but I'll resume. While I could buy them, friends indeed
were plenty. Alas! prudence is seldom co-mate with youth and inexperience.
The golden dream was soon to end--end even with the yellow dross that gave
it birth. Fallacious hopes of coming "posts," averted for a time my coming
wretchedness--three weeks, and not a line! The landlord suffered from an
intermitting affection, characteristic of the "stiff-necked
generation;"--he bowed to others--galvanism could not have procured the
tithe of a salaam for me. His till was afflicted with a sort of
sinking-fundishness. I was the contractor of "the small bill," whose exact
amount would enable him to meet a "heavy payment;" my very garments were
"tabooed" from all earth's decencies; splashes seemed to have taken a
lease of the bottoms of my trousers. My boots, once objects of the
tenderest care of their unworthy namesake, seemed conscious of the change,
and drooped in untreed wretchedness, desponding at the wretched wrinkles
now ruffling the once smooth calf! My coat no more appeared to catch the
dust; as if under the influence of some invisible charm, its white-washed
elbows never struck upon the sight of the else all-seeing boots; spider
never rushed from his cell with the post-haste speed with which he issued
from his dark recess, to pick the slightest cobweb that ever harnessed
Queen Mab's team, from _other_ coats; a gnat, a wandering hair left its
location, swept by the angry brush from the broad-cloth of those who paid
their bills--as far as I was concerned--all were inoculated with this
strange blindness. It was an overwhelming ophthalmia! The chambermaid,
through its fatality, never discovered that my jugs were empty, my bottle
clothed with slimy green, my soap-dish left untenanted. A day before this
time had been sufficient service for my hand-towel; now a week seemed to
render it less fit to taste the rubs of hands and soap. Dust lost its
vice, and lay unheeded in the crammed corner of my luckless room.
READER.--I feel for you.
Silence! the worst is yet to come. At dinner all things changed--soup,
before too hot to drink, came to my lips cool as if the north wind had
caressed it; number was at an end; I ranked no longer like a human being;
I was a huge _ought_--a walking cypher--a vile round O. I had neither
beginning nor end. Go where I would--top, bottom, sides, 'twas all the
same. Bouilli avoided me--vegetables declined growing under my eyes--fowls
fled from me. I might as well have longed for ice-cream in
Iceland--dessert in a desert. I had no turn--I was the _last man_.
Nevertheless, dinner was a necessary evil.
READER.--And tea?
Was excluded from the calendar. Night came, but no rest--all things had
forgotten their office. The sheets huddled in undisturbed selfishness,
like knotted cables, in one corner of the bed; the blankets, doubtless
disgusted at their conduct, sought refuge at the foot; and the flock, like
most other flocks, without a directing hand, was scattered in disjointed
heaps.
READER.--Did not you complain?
I did--_imprimis_--to boots--boots scratched his head; ditto
waiter--waiter shook his; the chambermaid, strange to say, was suddenly
deaf.
READER.--And the landlord?
Did nothing all day; but when I spoke, was in a hurry, "going to his
ledger," Had I had as many months as hydra, that would have stopped them
all.
READER.--You were to be _pitied_.
I was. I rose one morning with the sun--it scorched my face, but shone
not. Nature was in her spring-time to all others, though winter to me. I
wandered beside the banks of the rapid Rhine, I saw nothing but the thick
slime that clogged them, and wondered how I could have thought them
beautiful; the pebbles seemed crushed upon the beach, the stream but added
to their lifelessness by heaping on them its dull green slime; the lark,
indeed, was singing--Juliet was right--its notes were nothing but "harsh
discords and unpleasing sharps"--a rainbow threw its varied arch across
the heavens--sadness had robbed it of its charm--it seemed a visionary
cheat--a beautiful delusion.
READER.--I feel with you.