It is evidently a habit easy to acquire, even in old age--perhaps
especially in old age, for it has never been my habit through life. I
would sooner have talked to you about yourself, reader, or about you to
somebody else--your friend, or even your enemy; or about them to you.
But, indeed, at present, and until I die, I am without a soul to talk to
about anybody or anything worth speaking of, so that most of my talking
is done in pen and ink--a one-sided conversation, O patient reader, with
yourself. I am the most lonely old man in the world, although perhaps
the happiest.
Still, it is not always amusing where I live, cheerfully awaiting my
translation to another sphere.
There is the good chaplain, it is true, and the good priest; who talk to
me about myself a little too much, methinks; and the doctor, who talks
to me about the priest and the chaplain, which is better. He does not
seem to like them. He is a very witty man.
But, my brother maniacs!
They are lamentably _comme tout le monde_, after all. They are only
interesting when the mad fit seizes them. When free from their awful
complaint they are for the most part very common mortals: conventional
Philistines, dull dogs like myself, and dull dogs do not like
each other.
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