"I cannot go to rest, Charles, without bidding you good night. How weary I am, you must have perceived when we met, unfortunately for so short a time, six weeks ago. _Then_ I ought to have spoken to you, and we might have come to an agreement on this chapter on pathology, as we have done on so many others: Had I done so, I could now have quietly smoked my last cigar, instead of tiring us both, with this dull writing, but the words seemed to cleave to my lips. We should have probably disputed about the matter--Each of us would have maintained his own opinion, so I thought it useless to spoil the few hours we had to spend in each other's society. I am well acquainted with your principles, and know that if you were here, you would endeavour to reconcile me to existence. But you would wrong me, if you thought that I had caused this dissension between life and myself which nothing but a divorce can appease. I would willingly live if I _could_. I am not such a coward, or so fastidious that a few 'slings and arrows of outrageous fortune' should drive me distracted and make me take the resolution to leap out of my skin in the full sense of the word. Who would throw over the whole concern, and fume against the inscrutable Powers because many things are disagreeable to bear? Are not the decrees of the eternal powers equally unfathomable and indisputable? But here lies the fault--I can play the part of a wise man no longer. The desperate attempt to save reason at least from the general wreck of soul and mind has failed. Just now when I watched an old cork which had fallen into the gutter, and which lashed by the rain was helplessly whirling about in the dirty puddle, the thought struck me that this cork was my own brain which had stolen from out my heated skull, and was now taking a shower bath. If such an absurd fancy could take possession of my mind for a whole quarter of an hour, then must the last prop of my reason be fast giving way. "I have the highest idea of the self-sacrificing duties of a man towards his fellow-creatures, yet I cannot calmly see the moment approach when the asphyxiated soul is to be buried alive, watch the loss of self-consciousness, and finally sink lower than the most miserable brute. This, my dear Charles, would require the dullness of a sheep patiently awaiting the butcher's knife, though it feels a worm gnawing at its brain. "But I quite forget that this will seem but a confused outpouring of words to you, who are only aware of a portion of my calamities. You only know what the rest of the world is acquainted with--that my adopted sister died, this day year, that her father followed her a few days later, and her mother in the spring of this year.--You also know that my family consisted of only these three--that I loved them dearly--that, in fact, except yourself, they were the only beings to whom I was much attached.