ON BEING IN THE BLUES.

I can enjoy feeling melancholy, and there is a good deal of
satisfaction about being thoroughly miserable; but nobody likes a fit
of the blues. Nevertheless, everybody has them; notwithstanding
which, nobody can tell why. There is no accounting for them. You are
just as likely to have one on the day after you have come into a large
fortune as on the day after you have left your new silk umbrella in
the train. Its effect upon you is somewhat similar to what would
probably be produced by a combined attack of toothache, indigestion,
and cold in the head. You become stupid, restless, and irritable;
rude to strangers and dangerous toward your friends; clumsy, maudlin,
and quarrelsome; a nuisance to yourself and everybody about you.

While it is on you can do nothing and think of nothing, though feeling
at the time bound to do something. You can't sit still so put on your
hat and go for a walk; but before you get to the corner of the street
you wish you hadn't come out and you turn back. You open a book and
try to read, but you find Shakespeare trite and commonplace, Dickens
is dull and prosy, Thackeray a bore, and Carlyle too sentimental. You
throw the book aside and call the author names. Then you "shoo" the
cat out of the room and kick the door to after her. You think you
will write your letters, but after sticking at "Dearest Auntie: I find
I have five minutes to spare, and so hasten to write to you," for a
quarter of an hour, without being able to think of another sentence,
you tumble the paper into the desk, fling the wet pen down upon the
table-cloth, and start up with the resolution of going to see the
Thompsons. While pulling on your gloves, however, it occurs to you
that the Thompsons are idiots; that they never have supper; and that
you will be expected to jump the baby. You curse the Thompsons and