"No letters to-day;--so much the better,--there are no answers. I must not dream again;--it spoils even reality. I will go out of doors and see what the fog will do for me." "Ward talks of going to Holland, and we have partly discussed an _ensemble_ expedition.... And why not? ---- is distant, and will be at ----, still more distant, till spring. No one else except Augusta cares for me; no ties--no trammels." "No dreams last night of the dead, nor the living; so--I am 'firm as the marble, founded on the rock,' till the next earthquake.... "... I am tremendously in arrear with my letters--except to ----, and to her my thoughts overpower me;--my words never compass them." "I believe with Clym o' the Clow, or Robin Hood, 'By our Mary (dear name!) thou art both mother and May, I think it never was a man's lot to die before his day.'" [Illustration: _Mary Chaworth._] "---- has received the portrait safe; and, in answer the only remark she makes upon it is, 'indeed it is like'--and again 'indeed it is like.' With her the likeness 'covered a multitude of sins,' for I happen to know this portrait was not a flatterer, but dark and stern,--even black as the mood in which my mind was scorching last July when I sat for it." "I am _ennuyé_ beyond my usual tense of that yawning verb, which I am always conjugating; and I don't find that society much mends the matter. I am too lazy to shoot myself--and it would annoy Augusta, and perhaps ----." "Much done, but nothing to record. It is quite enough to set down my thoughts,--my actions will rarely bear retrospection." "The more I see of men the less I like them. If I could say so of women too, all would be well. Why can't I? I am now six-and-twenty; my passions have had enough to cool them; my affections more than enough to wither them,--and yet, and yet, always _yet_ and _but_." "I must set about some employment soon; my heart begins to eat _itself_ again." "I do not know that I am happiest when alone; but this I am sure of, that I never am long in the society even of _her_ I love (God knows too well, and the devil probably too) without a yearning for the company of my lamp, and my utterly confused and tumbled-down library. "I will keep no further journal of that same hesternal torch-light; and to prevent me from returning, like a dog, to the vomit of memory, I tear out the remaining leaves of this volume. To be sure, I have long despised myself and man, but I never spat in the face of my species before, 'O fool! I shall go mad!'"