Tonsberg Was
Something Like A Home - Yet I Was To Enter Without Lighting Up
Pleasure In Any Eye.
I dreaded the solitariness of my apartment,
and wished for night to hide the starting tears, or to shed them on
my pillow, and close my eyes on a world where I was destined to
wander alone.
Why has nature so many charms for me - calling forth
and cherishing refined sentiments, only to wound the breast that
fosters them? How illusive, perhaps the most so, are the plans of
happiness founded on virtue and principle; what inlets of misery do
they not open in a half-civilised society? The satisfaction arising
from conscious rectitude, will not calm an injured heart, when
tenderness is ever finding excuses; and self-applause is a cold
solitary feeling, that cannot supply the place of disappointed
affection, without throwing a gloom over every prospect, which,
banishing pleasure, does not exclude pain. I reasoned and reasoned;
but my heart was too full to allow me to remain in the house, and I
walked, till I was wearied out, to purchase rest - or rather
forgetfulness.
Employment has beguiled this day, and to-morrow I set out for Moss,
on my way to Stromstad. At Gothenburg I shall embrace my Fannikin;
probably she will not know me again - and I shall be hurt if she do
not. How childish is this! still it is a natural feeling. I would
not permit myself to indulge the "thick coming fears" of fondness,
whilst I was detained by business.
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