ese big duffers to read it by
their flashlights, and it had its convincing effect upon them. In disgust
they released me, one saying to the other:--

"If I'd knowed thot, I'd let the dom'd fool hang a week!"

The next day I advertised the apparatus for sale, _cheap_.

CHAPTER VII.

THE NEURASTHENIC FALLS IN LOVE.

In writing this sketch it is the endeavor to carry up the different
emotions and characteristics of my life in all their phases, as well as to
chronicle the vagaries resulting directly from alleged ailments. To do
this without seeming digressions and inconsistencies is not an easy task;
therefore this word of explanation seemed apropos.

In the affairs of the heart the neurasthenic is, as some one has said of
the heathen Chinee, "peculiar." As I have lived a life of celibacy so
long, I feel free to speak frankly on this matter. After reading this
chapter I am sure that no fair reader will picture me as her matinee idol;
and I am quite sure that no good woman would undertake the shaky job of
making me happy "forever and a day." She could never learn what I wanted
for breakfast. I never know myself, which for the present moment is
neither here nor there.

When very adolescent I was engrossed in a few exceedingly tame little love
affairs which were of short duration and easy to get over. These little
loves are like mumps and whooping-cough and other youthful affections:
they seem necessary, but seldom prove serious. Aside from these, I had
been proof against the tender passion throughout all that period of my
life when, according to the poet, "a young man's fancy lightly turns to
thoughts of love." While I was getting on in years the love germ was only
sleeping, and when it awakened all the lost time was soon made up. I had
always admired the female sex collectively and at a distance, but
individually no one had ever entered my life until I met Genevieve. The
plot thickens! While temporarily--I did everything temporarily--holding a
position on one of our daily papers, I suddenly became infatuated with
this young lady who occupied a type-writer's desk near my own. She was a
charming girl of twenty and I will dive into the matter by saying that I
was madly in love with her. She gave me every reason to believe that there
were responsive chords touched in her heart, and that my affection was
fully reciprocated. I became wilder every day! I could not be away from
this fair creature who had changed the w