At all events, the damage occasioned by my absence seems not to deserve, so long as I am able to support it, that I should waive the occasions of diverting myself by that troublesome assistance.

There is always something that goes amiss.  The affairs, one while of one house, and then of another, tear you to pieces; you pry into everything too near; your perspicacity hurts you here, as well as in other things.  I steal away from occasions of vexing myself, and turn from the knowledge of things that go amiss; and yet I cannot so order it, but that every hour I jostle against something or other that displeases me; and the tricks that they most conceal from me, are those that I the soonest come to know; some there are that, not to make matters worse, a man must himself help to conceal.  Vain vexations; vain sometimes, but always vexations.  The smallest and slightest impediments are the most piercing:  and as little letters most tire the eyes, so do little affairs most disturb us.  The rout of little ills more offend than one, how great soever.  By how much domestic thorns are numerous and slight, by so much they prick deeper and without warning, easily surprising us when least we suspect them.

[Now Homer shews us clearly enough how surprise gives the advantage; who represents Ulysses weeping at the death of his dog; and not weeping at the tears of his mother; the first accident, trivial as it was, got the better of him, coming upon him quite unexpectedly; he sustained the second, though more potent, because he was prepared for it.  ’Tis light occasions that humble our lives. ]

I am no philosopher; evils oppress me according to their weight, and they weigh as much according to the form as the matter, and very often more.  If I have therein more perspicacity than the vulgar, I have also more patience; in short, they weigh with me, if they do not hurt me.  Life is a tender thing, and easily molested.  Since my age has made me grow more pensive and morose,

          “Nemo enim resistit sibi, cum caeperit impelli,”

     ["For no man resists himself when he has begun to be driven
     forward.”—­Seneca, Ep., 13.]

for the most trivial cause imaginable, I irritate that humour, which afterwards nourishes and exasperates itself of its own motion; attracting and heaping up matter upon matter whereon to feed: 

“Stillicidi casus lapidem cavat:” 

     ["The ever falling drop hollows out a stone.”—­Lucretius, i. 314.]

these continual tricklings consume and ulcerate me.  Ordinary inconveniences are never light; they are continual and inseparable, especially when they spring from the members of a family, continual and inseparable.  When I consider my affairs at distance and in gross, I find, because perhaps my memory is none of the best, that they have gone on hitherto improving beyond my reason or expectation; my revenue seems greater than it is; its prosperity betrays me:  but when I pry more narrowly into the business, and see how all things go: