If I suffer myself to expand upon my feelings, there will be no end of this, Bob. I already have a kind of consciousness that I could fill three hundred and fifty folio volumes, like "Hansard's," in subtle description and discrimination of sensations that were not exactly "_this_," but were very like "_that_;" and of impressions, hopes, fancies, fears, and visions, a thousand times more real than all the actual events of my _bona fide_ existence. And, after all, what balderdash it is to compare the little meaningless incidents of our lives with the soul-stirring passions that rage within us! the thoughts that, so to say, form the very fuel of our natures! These are, indeed, the realities; and what we are in the habit of calling such are the mere mockeries and semblances of fact! I can honestly aver that I suffered--in the true sense of the word--more intense agony from the conflict of my distracted feelings than I ever did when lying under the pangs of a compound fracture; and I may add of a species of pain not to be alleviated by anodynes and soothed by hot flannels. To be brief, Bob, I felt that, though I had often caught slight attacks of the malady, at length I had contracted it in its deadliest form,--a regular "blue case," as they say, with bad symptoms from the start. Has it ever struck you that a man may go through every stage of a love fever without even so much as speaking to the object of his affections? I can assure you that the thing is true, and I myself suffered nightly every vacillating sense of hope, fear, ecstasy, despair, joy, jealousy, and frantic delight, just by following out the suggestions of my own fancy, and exalting into importance the veriest trifles of the hour. With what gloomy despondence did I turn homeward of an evening, when she sat back in the box, and perhaps nothing of her but her bouquet was visible for a whole night!--with what transports have I carried away the memory of her profile, seen but for a second! Then the agonies of my jealousy, as I saw her listening, with pleased attention, to some essenced puppy--I could swear it was such--who lounged into her box before the ballet! But at last came the climax of my joy, when I saw her "lorgnette" directed towards me, as I stood in the pit, and actually felt her eyes on me! I can imagine some old astronomer's ecstasy, as, gazing for hours on the sky of night, the star that he has watched and waited for has suddenly shone through the glass of his telescope, and lit up his very heart within him with its radiance. I 'd back myself to have experienced a still more thrilling sense of happiness as the beams of her bright eyes descended on me.