vocal? I indent the gayer flags of Pall Mall. It is Change time, and
I am strangely among the Elgin marbles. It was no hyperbole when I
ventured to compare the change in my condition to a passing into
another world. Time stands still in a manner to me. I have lost all
distinction of season. I do not know the day of the week, or of the
month. Each day used to be individually felt by me in its reference
to the foreign post days; in its distance from, or propinquity to,
the next Sunday. I had my Wednesday feelings, my Saturday nights'
sensations. The genius of each day was upon me distinctly during the
whole of it, affecting my appetite, spirits, &c. The phantom of the
next day, with the dreary five to follow, sate as a load upon my poor
Sabbath recreations. What charm has washed that Ethiop white? What
is gone of Black Monday? All days are the same. Sunday itself--that
unfortunate failure of a holyday as it too often proved, what with my
sense of its fugitiveness, and over-care to get the greatest quantity
of pleasure out of it--is melted down into a week day. I can spare
to go to church now, without grudging the huge cantle which it used
to seem to cut out of the holyday. I have Time for everything. I
can visit a sick friend. I can interrupt the man of much occupation
when he is busiest. I can insult over him with an invitation to take
a day's pleasure with me to Windsor this fine May-morning. It is
Lucretian pleasure to behold the poor drudges, whom I have left behind
in the world, carking and caring; like horses in a mill, drudging on
in the same eternal round--and what is it all for? A man can never
have too much Time to himself, nor too little to do. Had I a little
son, I would christen him NOTHING-TO-DO; he should do nothing. Man, I
verily believe, is out of his element as long as he is operative. I am
altogether for the life contemplative. Will no kindly earthquake come
and swallow up those accursed cotton mills? Take me that lumber of a
desk there, and bowl it down