Well,
there's no use yearning for what you can't have, and
there's no other man living to whom I would speak about
the matter at all; but life is a deadly, lonely thing
when a man has no one on his side but himself. Why is
it that I am sitting here in the moonlight writing to
you, except that I am craving for sympathy and
fellowship? I get it from you, too--as much as one
friend ever got from another--and yet there are some
sides to my nature with which neither wife nor friend nor
any one else can share. If you cut your own path, you
must expect to find yourself alone upon it.
Heigh ho! it's nearly dawn, and I as wakeful as ever.
It is chilly, and I have draped a blanket round me. I've
heard that this is the favourite hour of the suicide, and
I see that I've been tailing off in the direction of
melancholy myself. Let me wind up on a lighter chord by
quoting Cullingworth's latest article. I must tell you
that he is still inflamed by the idea of his own paper,
and his brain is in full eruption, sending out a
perpetual stream of libellous paragraphs, doggerel poems,
social skits, parodies, and articles. He brings them all
to me, and my table is already piled with them. Here is
his latest, brought up to my room after he had undressed.
It was the outcome of some remarks I had made about the
difficulty which our far-off descendants may have in
determining what the meaning is of some of the commonest
objects of our civilisation, and as a corollary how
careful we should be before we become dogmatic about the
old Romans or Egyptians.
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