Suffice It To Say, That In The Last
Four Years I Have Lived The Life Of A Soul In Purgatory
Or an
inhabitant of the 'Inferno,' and though I have worked like a horse,
determined, if possible, to rout
Out my evil genii - the wave of health
has gradually receded, till, at last, an internal voice has seemed
solemnly to say, 'Thus far shalt thou go and no farther.'
"If any one, who has not suffered similarly, has patience to read thus
far (which is doubtful), before now he has said, with Mr. Burchell in
the 'Vicar of Wakefield' - 'FUDGE.' No matter - I should have so
exclaimed once; and I now envy him his healthy ignorance. The history
of my derangements is told above in one word: that word is - OVERWORK.
"If any one who may not just like an actual dissection, will look at
one of Quain's 'Plates of the Bones, Muscles, and Nerves of the Human
Body,' he will see that, growing as it were out of the walls of the
stomach, there are, in our wonderful human machine, great bunches of
nerves, called, by the medicals, the 'great ganglionic system,' and he
will observe that these nerves are in intimate and inseparable
connection with the spinal cord, and the brain. Then, if he recollects
that a perpetual series of conversations and signals goes on by those
agents between the stomach and the brain - that, in fact, the two are
talking together every moment (without even the delay of that
inappreciable interval for which the electric current lingers on the
wires in its wondrous progress of intelligence) - he will see that he
cannot abuse either great organ without a 'combination of parties'
against his administration.
"My unfortunate mistake, therefore, was this: I overworked my
brain. It rebelled. Stomach joined the outbreak. Heart beat to the
rescue; and all the other corporal powers sympathised in the attempt to
put me down. They would not stand ten days' work a week, and no
Sunday, - relieved though the labour might be by the amusement of
speeches and leading articles.
"The first explosion of the conspiracy laid me fainting at the desk. A
sort of truce followed this. I consented for a few days to the terms of
the belligerents.
I rested. But resting, I was restless. Unfit to work, I was tormented
by an unnatural desire for action. Thus I roused myself early - rode to
the office (for I was too weak to walk), buried myself amidst my
letters, reports and accounts - and rushed on with the day's duties as
if all the work of the world had to be done in that one day, and that
one day was the last. But an hour or two usually settled the contest.
Head swam, heart beat, fluttered, stopped, struggled, - knees knocked
together, - and out oozed that cold clammy sweat which reminds one of
weakness and the grave. So with a pale face, anxious eye, and hollow
cheek, I had to quit the desk again and ride mournfully home, the
remainder of the day being consumed in a rest, which only increased my
melancholy feelings, because it made me more than ever conscious of my
feebleness and excitability.
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