heep-bell breaks the
sorrow-laden silence. Old men sit and gaze at withered flowers till
their sight is dimmed by the mist of tears. Little dainty maidens wait
and watch at open casements; but "he cometh not," and the heavy years
roll by and the sunny gold tresses wear white and thin. The babies that
they dandled have become grown men and women with podgy torments of
their own, and the playmates that they laughed with are lying very
silent under the waving grass. But still they wait and watch, till the
dark shadows of the unknown night steal up and gather round them and the
world with its childish troubles fades from their aching eyes.

I see pale corpses tossed on white-foamed waves, and death-beds stained
with bitter tears, and graves in trackless deserts. I hear the wild
wailing of women, the low moaning of little children, the dry sobbing of
strong men. It's all the muffins. I could not conjure up one melancholy
fancy upon a mutton chop and a glass of champagne.

A full stomach is a great aid to poetry, and indeed no sentiment of any
kind can stand upon an empty one. We have not time or inclination
to indulge in fanciful troubles until we have got rid of our real
misfortunes. We do not sigh over dead dicky-birds with the bailiff
in the house, and when we do not know where on earth to get our next
shilling from, we do not worry as to whether our mistress' smiles are
cold, or hot, or lukewarm, or anything else about them.

Foolish people--when I say "foolish people" in this contemptuous way I
mean people who entertain different opinions to mine. If there is one
person I do despise more than another, it is the man who does not think
exactly the same on all topics as I do--foolish people, I say, then,
who have never experienced much of either, will tell you that mental
distress is far more agonizing than bodily. Romantic and touching
theory! so comforting to the love-sick young sprig who looks down
patronizingly at some poor devil with a white starved face and thinks to
himself, "Ah, how happy you are compared with me!"--so soothing to fat
old gentlemen who cackle about the superiority of poverty over riches.
But it is all nonsense--all cant. An aching head soon makes one forget
an aching heart. A broken finger will drive away all recollections of
an empty chair. And when a man feels really hungry he does not feel
anything else.

We sleek, well-fed folk can hardly realize what feeling hungry is like.
We know what it