Paul Gosslett's Confessions in Love, Law, and The Civil ServiceLever, Charles
General
Paul Gosslett's Confessions in Love, Law, and The Civil Service
Lever, Charles
Fiction
I locked the door to be alone with my own thoughts, and, opening my
writing-desk, I spread before me four sovereigns and some silver.
“Barely my funeral expenses,” said I, bitterly. I leaned my head on my
hand, and fell into a mood of sad thought. I was n't a bit of a poet. I
could n't have made three lines of verse had you given me a million for
it; but somehow I bethought me of Chatterton in his garret, and said
to myself, “Like him, poor Gosslett sunk, famished in the midst of
plenty,--a man in all the vigor of youth, able, active, and energetic,
with a mind richly gifted, and a heart tender as a woman's.” I could n't
go on. I blubbered out into a fit of crying that nearly choked me.
“Please, sir,” said the maid, tapping at the door, “the gentleman in the
next room begs you not to laugh so loud.”
“Laugh!” burst I out. “Tell him, woman, to take care and be present
at the inquest. His evidence will be invaluable.” As I spoke, I threw
myself on my bed, and fell soon after into a sound sleep.
When I woke, it was night. The lamps were lighted in the street, and
a small, thin rain was falling, blurring the gas-flame, and making
everything look indistinct and dreary. I sat at the window and looked
out, I know not how long. The world was crape-covered to me; not a
thought of it that was not dark and dismal. I tried to take a retrospect
of my life, and see where and how I might have done better; but all I
could collect was, that I had met nothing but ingratitude and injustice,
while others, with but a tithe of my capacity, had risen to wealth
and honor. I, fated to evil from my birth, fought my long fight with
fortune, and sank at last, exhausted. “I wonder will any one ever say,
'Poor Gosslett'? I wonder will there be--even late though it be--one
voice to declare, 'That was no common man! Gosslett, in any country but
our own, would have been distinguished and honored. To great powers
of judgment he united a fancy rich, varied, and picturesque; his
temperament was poetic, but his reasoning faculties asserted the mastery
over his imagination '? Will they be acute enough to read me thus? Will
they know,--in one word,--will they know the man they have suffered to
perish in the midst of them?” My one gleam of comfort was the unavailing
regret I should leave to a world that had neglected me. “Yes,” said I,
bitterly, “weep on, and cease not.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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