I am weary of the
world; life is weary of me. My day is gone into twilight, and I don't
think it worth the expense of candles. My wick bath a thief in it, but
I can't muster courage to snuff it. I inhale suffocation; I can't
distinguish veal from mutton; nothing interests me. 'Tis twelve
o'clock, and Thurtell* is just now coming out upon the new drop, Jack
Ketch alertly tucking up his greasy sleeves to do the last office of
mortality; yet cannot I elicit a groan or a moral reflection. If you
told me the world will be at an end tomorrow, I should say "Will it?"
I have not volition enough left to dot my i's, much less to comb my
eyebrows; my eyes are set in my head; my brains are gone out to see a
poor relation in Moorfields, and they did not say when they'd come back
again; my skull is a Grub-street attic to let,---not so much as a
joint-stool left in it; my hand writes, not I, from habit, as chickens
run about a little when their heads are cut off. Oh for a vigorous fit
of gout, colic, toothache---an earwig{#} * in my auditory, a fly in my
visual organs; pain is life,---the sharper the more evidence of life;
but this apathy, this death! Did you ever have an obstinate cold, a six
or seven weeks' unintermitting chill and suspension of hope, fear,
conscience, and everything? Yet do I try all I can to cure it.
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