sleep, eat, drink, laugh even, much as I used to do, but I am like a body of which one half is paralyzed, while the other retains its vigour; the inevitable, every-day, common side is quick and capable; the other—God and my own heart only know about that. I never was one to keep up a running complaint about anything: when I was glad or sorry, I always made a great noise over it and had done with it; so in the fortnight that preceded my illness I think I exhausted all power of active suffering, and that for the rest of my life I can only endure passively.
I do not believe in any healthy man or woman dying for love, unless they set themselves deliberately to do so. They must be either very vicious or very weak, for it is a little-minded nature that, possessing many good gifts, counts life as stale and worthless because the one thing he desires is withheld from him. Shame and disgrace may well kill, and do, but mere suffering never; the human heart must have something more than simple pain before it breaks. Folks do die of broken hearts must assuredly; or rather, it should be said, that a morbid and sinful indulgence in the luxury of grief, a dogged resolution to contemplate no subject save that of his own misery, causes remembrance to become a disease; the mind and heart consume themselves in unvarying regrets, the powers of both mind and body fall into disuse and gradually, but surely, the silver bowl is broken at the fountain.
It is considered a poetical thing enough to die for love; surely men know by this me how infinitely easier a thing it is than to live for love? The man who takes up his burden and bears it bravely has my honour, but he who lies down, and lets the waters of adversity swirl over his head, has my hearty contempt. Every man and woman too has work to do; the time for rest comes surely enough to all; let us wear out, I say, not rust out. And so I have tried, yes, from the very beginning, not to make my trouble
