in
comparison with what your doctor and nurse (or nurses) would have
levied on you, you will feel that you are more than fit to resume that
burden of personality whereunder you had sunk. You will be victoriously
yourself again.

Yet I think you will look back a little wistfully on the period of your
obliteration. People--for people are very nice, really, most of
them--will tell you that they have missed you. You will reply that you
did not miss yourself. And you will go the more strenuously to your
work and pleasure, so as to have the sooner an excuse for a good
riddance.

A STUDY IN DEJECTION

Riderless the horse was, and with none to hold his bridle. But he
waited patiently, submissively, there where I saw him, at the shabby
corner of a certain shabby little street in Chelsea. 'My beautiful, my
beautiful, thou standest meekly by,' sang Mrs. Norton of her Arab
steed, 'with thy proudly-arched and glossy neck, thy dark and fiery
eye.' Catching the eye of this other horse, I saw that such fire as
might once have blazed there had long smouldered away. Chestnut though
he was, he had no mettle. His chestnut coat was all dull and rough,
unkempt as that of an inferior cab-horse. Of his once luxuriant mane
there were but a few poor tufts now. His saddle was torn and
weather-stained. The one stirrup that dangled therefrom was red with
rust.

I never saw in any creature a look of such unutterable dejection.
Dejection, in the most literal sense of the word, indeed was his. He
had been cast down. He had fallen from higher and happier things. With
his 'arched neck,' and with other points which not neglect nor
ill-usage could rob of their old grace, he had kept something of his
fallen day about him. In the window of the little shop outside which he
stood were things that seemed to match him--things appealing to the
sense that he appealed to. A tarnished French mirror, a strip of faded
carpet, some rows of battered, tattered books, a few cups and saucers
that had erst been riveted and erst been dusted--all these, in a
gallimaufry of other languid odds and ends, seen through this
mud-splashed window, silently echoed the silent misery of the horse.
They were remembering Zion. They had been beautiful once, and
expensive, and well cared for, and admired, and coveted. And now...

They had, at least, the consolation of being indoors. Public
laughing-stock though they were, they had a barrier of glass between
themselves and the i