If this is salubrity, give me raging disease! I 'm pestered to
death; I go about with a chronic heartache; there are moments when I
could shed salt tears. There 's a pretty portrait of the most placid
of men! I wish I could make you understand; or rather, I wish you could
make me! I don't understand a jot; it 's a hideous, mocking mystery; I
give it up! I don't in the least give it up, you know; I 'm incapable
of giving it up. I sit holding my head by the hour, racking my brain,
wondering what under heaven is to be done. You told me at Northampton
that I took the thing too easily; you would tell me now, perhaps, that
I take it too hard. I do, altogether; but it can't be helped. Without
flattering myself, I may say I 'm sympathetic. Many another man before
this would have cast his perplexities to the winds and declared that Mr.
Hudson must lie on his bed as he had made it. Some men, perhaps, would
even say that I am making a mighty ado about nothing; that I have only
to give him rope, and he will tire himself out. But he tugs at his rope
altogether too hard for me to hold it comfortably.
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