your letters and newspapers arrive, you luxuriously
read them, a very little at a time, and you soon forget
all you have read. You turn over and fall asleep
for a while; then you read a little more. Your
reviving appetite makes simple food a source of real
enjoyment. The children come in, and tell you
wonderful stories of all that has happened since you
were ill. They are a little subdued at first,
but soon grow noisy as usual; and their noise does
not in the least disturb you. You hear it as
though it were miles off. After days and nights
of great pain, you understand the blessing of ease
and rest: you are disposed to be pleased with
everything, and everybody wants to please you.
The day passes away, and the evening darkness comes
before you are aware. Everything is strange,
and everything is soothing and pleasant. The only
disadvantage is, that you grow so fond of lying in
bed, that you shrink extremely from the prospect of
ever getting up again.
Having arrived at this point, at 10.45 on this Friday
evening, I gathered up all the pages which have been
written, and carried them to the fireside, and sitting
there, I read them over; and I confess, that on the
whole, it struck me that the present essay was somewhat
heavy. A severe critic might possibly say that
it was stupid. I fancied it would have been rather
good when it was sketched out; but it has not come
up to expectation. However, it is as good as
I could make it; and I trust the next essay may be
better. It is a chance, you see, what the quality
of any composition shall be. Give me a handle
to turn, and I should undertake upon every day to
turn it equally well. But in the working of the
mental machine, the same pressure of steam, the same
exertion of will, the same strain of what powers you
have, will not always produce the same result.
And if you, reader, feel some disappointment at looking
at a new work by an old friend, and finding it not
up to the mark you expected, think how much greater
his disappointment must have been as the texture rolled
out from the loom, and he felt it was not what he
had wished. Here, to-night, the room and the house
are as still as in my remembrance of the Solitary
Days which are gone. But they will not be still
to-morrow morning; and they are so now because sleep
has hushed two little voices, and stayed the ceaseless
movements of four little pattering feet. May those
Solitary Days never return. They are well enough
when the great look-out is onward; but, oh! how dreary
such days must be to the old man whose main prospect
is of the past! I cannot imagine a lot more completely
beyond all earthly consolation, than that of a man
from whom wife and children have been taken away,
and who lives now alone in the dwelling once gladdened
by their presence, but now haunted by their memory.
Let us humbly pray, my reader, that such a lot may
never be yours or mine.
