affairs are soon conned; he gets them by heart till they
haunt him when he would be rid of them; but those of another can
be known only in part, while that which remains unrevealed is a
never-ending stimulus to curiosity. The only natural mode, therefore,
of preventing the mind preying on itself,--the only rational, because
the only interminable employment,--is to be busy about other people's
business.

The variety of objects which this new course of life each day
presented, brought me at length to a state of sanity; at least, I was
no longer disposed to conjure up remote dangers to my door, or chew
the cud on my indigested past reading; though sometimes, I confess,
when I have been tempted to meddle with a very bad character, I have
invariably been threatened with a relapse; which leads me to think the
existence of some secret affinity between rogues and boa-constrictors
is not unlikely. In a short time, however, I had every reason to
believe myself completely cured; for the days began to appear of their
natural length, and I no longer saw every thing through a pair of
blue spectacles, but found nature diversified by a thousand beautiful
colors, and the people about me a thousand times more interesting than
hyenas or Hottentots. The world is now my only study, and I trust I
shall stick to it for the sake of my health.

Footnotes

[1] The Frightful is not the Terrible, though often confounded with it.

[2] See Introductory Discourse.

[3] There is one species of imitation, however, which, as having been
practised by some of the most original minds, and also sanctioned by the
ablest writers, demands at least a little consideration; namely, the
adoption of an attitude, provided it be employed to convey a different
thought. So far, indeed, as the imitation has been confined to a
suggestion, and the attitude adopted has been modified by the new subject,
to which it was transferred, by a distinct change of character and
expression, though with but little variation in the disposition of limbs,
we may not dissent; such imitations being virtually little more than
hints, since they end in thoughts either totally different from, or more
complete than, the first. This we do not condemn, for every Poet, as well
as Artist, knows that a thought so modified is of right his own. It is the
transplanting of a tree, not the borrowing of a seed, against which we
contend. But when writers justify the appropriation, of entire