r an instant that anybody would be sorry at anything that
might happen to you. Who would care two straws (whatever precise amount
of care two straws may represent) whether you are blown up, or hung
up, or married, or drowned? Nobody cares for you. You never have
been properly appreciated, never met with your due deserts in any one
particular. You review the whole of your past life, and it is painfully
apparent that you have been ill-used from your cradle.

Half an hour's indulgence in these considerations works you up into
a state of savage fury against everybody and everything, especially
yourself, whom anatomical reasons alone prevent your kicking. Bed-time
at last comes, to save you from doing something rash, and you spring
upstairs, throw off your clothes, leaving them strewn all over the room,
blow out the candle, and jump into bed as if you had backed yourself
for a heavy wager to do the whole thing against time. There you toss
and tumble about for a couple of hours or so, varying the monotony by
occasionally jerking the clothes off and getting out and putting them
on again. At length you drop into an uneasy and fitful slumber, have bad
dreams, and wake up late the next morning.

At least, this is all we poor single men can do under the circumstances.
Married men bully their wives, grumble at the dinner, and insist on the
children's going to bed. All of which, creating, as it does, a good deal
of disturbance in the house, must be a great relief to the feelings of a
man in the blues, rows being the only form of amusement in which he can
take any interest.

The symptoms of the infirmity are much the same in every case, but the
affliction itself is variously termed. The poet says that "a feeling
of sadness comes o'er him." 'Arry refers to the heavings of his wayward
heart by confiding to Jimee that he has "got the blooming hump." Your
sister doesn't know what is the matter with her to-night. She feels out
of sorts altogether and hopes nothing is going to happen. The every-day
young man is "so awful glad to meet you, old fellow," for he does "feel
so jolly miserable this evening." As for myself, I generally say that "I
have a strange, unsettled feeling to-night" and "think I'll go out."

By the way, it never does come except in the evening. In the sun-time,
when the world is bounding forward full of life, we cannot stay to sigh
and sulk. The roar of the working day drowns the voices of the elfin
sprites that are ev