of some solitary nigger who brought it to Liverpool, and you'll be a
baronet in a fortnight and a member of all the European academies in a
month. But study colds, indigestion and insomnia, and change a thousand
lives a year from despair to felicity, and no authority will take the
slightest notice of you ... As with physical, so with mental
diseases--or spiritual, if you like to call them so. You don't suspect
that in the common mental diseases I'm a regular benefactor of mankind;
but I am. I don't blame you for not knowing it, because you're about the
last person I should have thought susceptible to any mental disease, and
so you've had no chance of finding out. Now, what is it?"

"Don't I tell you I'm suffering from horrible complications?" cried Mr.
Prohack.

"What kind of complications?"

"Every kind. My aim has always been to keep my life simple, and I
succeeded very well--perhaps too well--until I inherited money. I don't
mind money, but I do mind complications. I don't want a large
house--because it means complications. I desire Sissie's happiness, but
I hate weddings. I desire to be looked after, but I hate strange
servants. I can find pleasure in a motor-car, but I hate even the risk
of accidents. I have no objection to an income, but I hate investments.
And so on. All I ask is to live simply and sensibly, but instead of that
my existence is transformed into a quadratic equation. And I can't stop
it. My happiness is not increasing--it's decreasing. I spend more and
more time in wondering whither I am going, what I am after, and where
precisely is the point of being alive at all. That's a fact, and now you
know it."