A Life for a Life, Volume 1 (of 3)Craik, Dinah Maria Mulock
General
A Life for a Life, Volume 1 (of 3)
Craik, Dinah Maria Mulock
Fiction
No. 2--Augustus Treherne, æt. 22, intermittent fever, verging upon
yellow fever occasionally, as to-day. Pulse, very high, tongue, rather
foul, especially in speaking of Mr. Colin Granton. Countenance, pale,
inclining to livid. A very bad case altogether.
Patient enters, whistling like a steam-engine, as furious and as shrill,
with a corresponding puff of smoke. I point to the obnoxious vapour.
"Beg pardon, Doctor, I always forget. What a tyrant you are!"
"Very likely; but there is one thing I never will allow; smoking in my
hut. I did not, you know, even in the Crimea."
The lad sat down, sighing like a furnace.
"Heigho, Doctor, I wish I were you."
"Do you?"
"You always seem so uncommonly comfortable; never want a cigar or
anything to quiet your nerves and keep you in good humour. You never get
into a scrape of any sort; have neither a mother to lecture you, nor an
old governor to bully you."
"Stop there."
"I will then; you need not take me up so sharp. He's a trump, after
all. You know that, so I don't mind a word or two against him. Just read
there."
He threw over one of Sir William's ultraprosy moral essays--which no
doubt the worthy old gentleman flatters himself are, in another line,
the very copy of Lord Chesterfield's letters to his son. I might have
smiled at it had I been alone,--or laughed at it were I young enough to
sympathise with the modern system of transposing into "the Governor,"
the ancient reverend name of "Father."
"You see what an opinion he has of you. 'Pon my life, if I were not
the meekest fellow imaginable, always ready to be led by a straw into
Virtue's ways, I should have cut your acquaintance long ago. 'Invariably
follow the advice of Dr. Urquhart,'--'I wish, my dear son, that your
character more resembled that of your friend, Dr. Urquhart. I should
be more concerned about your many follies, were you not in the same
regiment as Dr. Urquhart. Dr. Urquhart is one of the wisest men I ever
knew,' and so on, and so on. What say you?"
I said nothing; and I now write down this, as I shall write anything of
the kind which enters into the plain relation of facts or conversations
which daily occur. God knows how vain such words are to me at the best
of times--mere sounding brass and tinkling cymbal--as the like must be
to most men well acquainted with themselves. At some times, and under
certain states of mind, they become to my ear the most refined and
exquisite torture that my bitterest enemy could desire to inflict. There
is no need, therefore, to apologise for them. Apologise to whom, indeed?
Having resolved to write this, it were folly to make it an imperfect
statement. A journal should be fresh, complete, and correct--the man's
entire life, or nothing. Since, if he sets it down at all, it
must necessarily be for his own sole benefit--it would be the most
contemptible form of egotistic humbug to arrange and modify it as if it
were meant for the eye of any other person.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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