Smirke has a private care watching at his bedside, and sitting behind him
on his pony; and is no more satisfied than the rest of us. How lonely we
are in the world; how selfish and secret, everybody! You and your wife
have pressed the same pillow for forty years and fancy yourselves united.
Psha, does she cry out when you have the gout, or do you lie awake when
she has the toothache? Your artless daughter, seemingly all innocence and
devoted to her mamma and her piano-lesson, is thinking of neither, but of
the young Lieutenant with whom she danced at the last ball--the honest
frank boy just returned from school is secretly speculating upon the
money you will give him, and the debts he owes the tart-man. The old
grandmother crooning in the corner and bound to another world within a
few months, has some business or cares which are quite private and her
own--very likely she is thinking of fifty years back, and that night when
she made such an impression, and danced a cotillon with the Captain
before your father proposed for her: or, what a silly little overrated
creature your wife is, and how absurdly you are infatuated about her--
and, as for your wife--O philosophic reader, answer and say,--Do you tell
her all? Ah, sir--a distinct universe walks about under your hat and
under mine--all things in nature are different to each--the woman we look
at has not the same features, the dish we eat from has not the same taste
to the one and the other--you and I are but a pair of infinite
isolations, with some fellow-islands a little more or less near to us.
Pages:
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346