s 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 decide not to go.

By this time you feel completely crushed. You bury your face in your
hands and think you would like to die and go to heaven. You picture to
yourself your own sick-bed, with all your friends and relations standing
round you weeping. You bless them all, especially the young and pretty
ones. They will value you when you are gone, so you say to yourself,
and learn too late what they have lost; and you bitterly contrast their
presumed regard for you then with their decided want of veneration now.

These reflections make you feel a little more cheerful, but only for a
brief period; for the next moment you think what a fool you must be
to imagine fo