"But By Great Care And Management Of Myself, By Desperate Strivings To
Get A Little Health, I Did Improve.
Two hours a day at work, two
or three times a week, became two or three hours every working day of
the week.
Then, as a wonderful achievement, at last I managed to endure
half a day's business at a time. And at the end of some months (one
beautiful day in August, bless the sunlight) I actually did a
whole day's work! And so, at last, I got before the wind
sufficiently to engage again in the competition of business life, with
some credit and success. None of those, however, with whom I had to
compete, and to whom work (as it should be to every man in health) was
easy and pleasant, knew the cost of many of my weary days and nights of
labour, or the nervous suffering and physical weakness; in spite of
which I endeavoured always to meet my compeers in the working world
with pleasantry, or at least with a smile.
"I had many relapses - but I hardly ever laid up for more than an hour
or two. In these cases a loll, or rather a recumbent pant, upon the
sofa, and a dose of some bitter tonic, or a strong glass of brandy,
usually brought down the palpitation, and enabled me to set to work
again as if nothing had happened. Indeed, as the eels get accustomed to
skinning, so I got used to all this; and it became at last an old
habit, and bearable.
"Thus I went on from 1846 until 1850. Four years of incessant and
various labour, relieved only by the confidence and appreciation of
those who directed, and the good feeling of those who were engaged,
like me, in the executive management of the great corporation with
which, during this (to me) memorable period of my life, I was
connected. I need not repeat how thoroughly I was sustained and
comforted by the assiduity of one of the best of women. I tried to
thank her by making light of my many miseries.
"This sort of life was, however, too great and continued a strain for a
rickety machine to last. And at times, when I gave way to those strange
thoughts about the use and end of human existence, which crowd upon the
mind in nervous disease - it seemed to me as if I could weigh and
measure the particles of vitality from my daily diminishing store -
expended in each unnatural effort of labour - as if every stroke of my
business craft represented so much of that daily shortening distance
which lay between me and the end. I felt the price I was paying for the
privilege of labour, and for its remuneration. But I thought, ever, of
my wife and little babies, and the thought roused me to a kind of
desperation, and made me feel for the time as if I could trample
weakness under foot, and tear out, break in pieces, and cast away those
miserable, oversensitive organs, which chained, cramped, and hindered
me.
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