it: did this get abroad, he would be considered ripe for
Bedlam.

Physician, heal thyself! He swallowed doses of a tonic preparation, and
put himself on a fatty diet.

Thereafter he tried to take a philosophic view of his case. He had now,
he told himself, reached an age when such a state of mind gave cause
neither for astonishment nor alarm. How often had it not fallen to him,
in his role of medical adviser, to reassure a patient on this score.
The arrival of middle age brought about a certain lowness of spirits in
even the most robust: along with a more or less marked bodily languor
went an uneasy sense of coming loss: the time was at hand to bid
farewell to much that had hitherto made life agreeable; and for most
this was a bitter pill. Meanwhile, one held a kind of mental
stocktaking. As often as not by the light of a complete
disillusionment. Of the many glorious things one had hoped to do--or to
be--nothing was accomplished: the great realisation, in youth
breathlessly chased but never grasped, was now seen to be a
mist-wraith, which could wear a thousand forms, but invariably turned
to air as one came up with it. In nine instances out of ten there was
nothing to put in its place; and you began to ask yourself in a kind of
horrific amaze: "Can this be all? ... THIS? For this the pother of
growth, the struggles, and the sufferings?" The soul's climacteric, if
you would, from which a mortal came forth dulled to resignation; or
greedy for the few physical pleasures left him; or prone to that tragic
clinging to youth's skirts, which made the later years of many women
and not a few men ridiculous. In each case the motive power was the
same: the haunting fear that one had squeezed life dry; worse still,
that it had not been worth the squeezing.

Thus his reason. But, like a tongue of flame, his instinct leapt up to
give combat. By the gods, this cap did NOT fit him! Squeezed life try?
... found it not worth while? Why, he had never got within measurable
distance of what he called life, at all! There could be no question of
him resigning himself: deep down in him, he knew, was an enormous
residue of vitality, of untouched mental energy that only waited to be
drawn on. It was like a buried treasure, jealously kept for the event
of his one day catching up with life: not the bare scramble for a
living that here went by that name, but Life with a capital L, the
existence he had once confidently counted on as his--a tourn