for,
besides the incommodity of heat, less remediable than cold, and besides
the force of the sunbeams that strike upon the head, all glittering light
offends my eyes, so that I could not now sit at dinner over against a
flaming fire.

To dull the whiteness of paper, in those times when I was more wont to
read, I laid a piece of glass upon my book, and found my eyes much
relieved by it. I am to this hour--to the age of fifty-four--Ignorant of
the use of spectacles; and I can see as far as ever I did, or any other.
'Tis true that in the evening I begin to find a little disturbance and
weakness in my sight if I read, an exercise I have always found
troublesome, especially by night. Here is one step back, and a very
manifest one; I shall retire another: from the second to the third, and
so to the fourth, so gently, that I shall be stark blind before I shall
be sensible of the age and decay of my sight: so artificially do the
Fatal Sisters untwist our lives. And so I doubt whether my hearing
begins to grow thick; and you will see I shall have half lost it, when I
shall still lay the fault on the voices of those who speak to me. A man
must screw up his soul to a high pitch to make it sensible how it ebbs
away.

My walking is quick and firm; and I know not which of the two, my mind or
my body, I have most to do to keep in the same state. That preacher is
very much my friend who can fix my attention a whole sermon through: in
places of ceremony, where every one's countenance is so starched, where I
have seen the ladies keep even their eyes so fixed, I could never order
it so, that some part or other of me did not lash out; so that though I
was seated, I was never settled; and as to gesticulation, I am never
without a switch in my hand, walking or riding. As the philosopher
Chrysippus' maid said of her master, that he was only drunk in his legs,
for it was his custom to be always kicking them about in what place
soever he sat; and she said it when, the wine having made all his
companions drunk, he found no alteration in himself at all; it may have
been said of me from my infancy, that I had either folly or quicksilver
in my feet, so much stirring and unsettledness there is in them, wherever
they are placed.

'Tis indecent, besides the hurt it does to one's health, and even to the
pleasure of eating, to eat greedily as I do; I often bite my tongue, and
sometimes my fingers, in my haste. Diogenes, meeting a boy eating