ngs two persons, and always
wrongs one--yourself. You have grown weary of wronging yourself and
repenting; so you manacle, you fetter, you log-chain the frantic
impulse to write a pulverizing answer. You will wait a day or die.
But in the mean time what do you do? Why, if it is about dinner-
time, you sit at table in a deep abstraction all through the meal;
you try to throw it off and help do the talking; you get a start
three or four times, but conversation dies on your lips every time
--your mind isn't on it; your heart isn't in it. You give up, and
subside into a bottomless deep of silence, permanently; people must
speak to you two or three times to get your attention, and then say
it over again to make you understand. This kind of thing goes on
all the rest of the evening; nobody can interest you in anything;
you are useless, a depressing influence, a burden. You go to bed at
last; but at three in the morning you are as wide awake as you were
in the beginning. Thus we see what you have been doing for nine
hours--on the outside. But what were you doing on the inside? You
were writing letters--in your mind. And enjoying it, that is quite
true; that is not to be denied. You have been flaying your
correspondent alive with your incorporeal pen; you have been
braining him, disemboweling him, carving him into little bits, and
then--doing it all over again. For nine hours.

It was wasted time, for you had no intention of putting any of this
insanity on paper and mailing it. Yes, you know that, and confess
it--but what were you to do? Where was your remedy? Will anybody
contend that a man can say to such masterful anger as that, Go, and
be obeyed?

No, he cannot; that is certainly true. Well, then, what is he to
do? I will explain by the suggestion contained in my opening
paragraph. During the nine hours he has written as many as forty-
seven furious letters--in his mind. If he had put just one of them
on paper it would have brought him relief, saved him eight hours of
trouble, and given him an hour's red-hot pleasure besides.

He is not to mail this letter; he understands that, and so he can
turn on the whole volume of his wrath; there is no harm. He is only
writing it to get the bile out. So to speak, he is a volcano:
imaging himself erupting does no good; he must open up his cra