thing but how to get better.

What a world of foreign cares are merged in that absorbing
consideration!

He has put on the strong armour of sickness, he is wrapped in the
callous hide of suffering; he keeps his sympathy, like some curious
vintage, under trusty lock and key, for his own use only.

He lies pitying himself, honing and moaning to himself; he yearneth
over himself; his bowels are even melted within him, to think what he
suffers; he is not ashamed to weep over himself.

He is for ever plotting how to do some good to himself; studying
little stratagems and artificial alleviations.

He makes the most of himself; dividing himself, by an allowable
fiction, into as many distinct individuals, as he hath sore and
sorrowing members. Sometimes he meditates--as of a thing apart from
him--upon his poor aching head, and that dull pain which, dozing or
waking, lay in it all the past night like a log, or palpable substance
of pain, not to be removed without opening the very scull, as it
seemed, to take it thence. Or he pities his long, clammy, attenuated
fingers. He compassionates himself all over; and his bed is a very
discipline of humanity, and tender heart.

He is his own sympathiser; and instinctively feels that none can so
well perform that office for him. He cares for few spectators to his
tragedy. Only that punctual face of the old nurse pleases him, that
announces his broths, and his cordials. He likes it because it is