Much Darker Days : Large Print

PHILIPPA was another's! Life was no longer worth living. Hope was evaluated; ambitionwas blunted. The interest which I had hitherto felt in my profession vanished.

All thespring, the elasticity seemed taken out of my two Bounding Brothers from the Gutta Perchacoast.

For months I did my work in a perfunctory manner. I added a Tattooed Man to myexhibition and a Two-headed Snake, also a White-eyed Botocudo, who played the guitar,and a pair of Siamese Twins, who were fired out of a double-barrelled cannon, and then didthe lofty trapeze business.

They drew, but success gave me no pleasure. So long as I mademoney enough for my daily needs (and whisky was cheap), what recked I?

My mood wasnone of the sweetest. My friends fell off from me; ay, they fell like nine-pins whenever Icould get within reach of them.

I was alone in the world.You will not be surprised to hear it; the wretched have no friends.

So things went on for ayear. I became worse instead of better. My gloom deepened, my liver grew more and moreconfirmed in its morbid inaction.

These are not lover's rhapsodies, they merely show thestate of my body and mind, and explain what purists may condemn.

In this condition Iheard without hypocritical regret that a distant relative (a long-lost uncle) hadconveniently left me his vast property.

I cared only because it enabled me to withdrawfrom the profession.

I disposed of my exhibition, or rather I let it go for a song.

I simplyhanded over the Tattooed Man, the Artillery Twins, and the Double-headed Serpent to thefirst-comer, who happened to be a rural dean.

Far in the deeps of the country, near the littletown of Roding, on a lonely highway, where no man ever came, I took a 'pike.

Here I dweltlike a hermit, refusing to give change to the rare passers-by in carts and gigs, and attendedby a handy fellow, William Evans, stolid as the Sphynx, which word, for reasons that may ormay not appear later in this narrative, I prefer to spell with a y, contrary to the bestauthorities and usual custom.