nce to locality--a numb soporifical
goodfornothingness--an ossification all over--an oyster-like
insensibility to the passing events--a mind-stupor,--a brawny defiance
to the needles of a thrusting-in conscience--did you ever have a very
bad cold, with a total irresolution to submit to water gruel
processes?--this has been for many weeks my lot, and my excuse--my
fingers drag heavily over this paper, and to my thinking it is three and
twenty furlongs from here to the end of this demi-sheet--I have not a
thing to say--nothing is of more importance than another--I am flatter
than a denial or a pancake--emptier than Judge Park's wig when the head
is in it--duller than a country stage when the actors are off it --a
cypher--an O--I acknowledge life at all, only by an occasional
convulsional cough, and a permanent phlegmatic pain in the chest--I am
weary of the world--Life is weary of me-- My day is gone into Twilight
and I don't think it worth the expence of candles--my wick hath a thief
in it, but I can't muster courage to snuff it--I inhale suffocation--I
can't distinguish veal from mutton--nothing interests me--'tis 12
o'clock and Thurtell is just now coming out upon the New Drop--Jack
Ketch alertly tucking up his greasy sleeves to do the last office of
mortality, yet cannot I elicit a groan or a moral reflection-- if you
told me the world will be at end tomorrow, I should just say, "will
it?"--I have not volition enough to dot my i's --much less to comb my
EYEBROWS--my eyes are set in my head--my brains are gone out to see a
poor relation in Moorfields, and they did not say when they'd come back
again-- my scull is a Grub street Attic, to let--not so much as a joint
stool or a crackd jordan left in it--my hand writes, not I, from habit,
as chickens run about a little when their heads are off-- O for a
vigorous fit of gout, cholic, tooth ache--an earwig in my auditory, a
fly in my visual organs--pain is life--the sharper, the more evidence of
life--but this apathy, this death--did you ever have an obstinate cold,
a six or seven weeks' unintermitting chill and suspension of hope, fear,
conscience, and every thing--yet do I try all I can to cure it, I try
wine, and spirits, and smoking, and snuff in unsparing quantities, but
they all only seem to make me worse, instead of better--I sleep in a
damp room, but it does me no good; I come home late o' nights, but do
not find any visible amendment.

Who shall deliver me from the