When the misfortune of my Nose fell so heavily upon my father’s head;—the reader remembers that he walked instantly upstairs, and cast himself down upon his bed; and from hence, unless he has a great insight into human nature, he will be apt to expect a rotation of the same ascending and descending movements from him, upon his misfortune of my Name ;⸺no.
The different weight, dear Sir⸺nay even the different package of two vexations of the same weight⸺makes a very wide difference in our manner of bearing and getting through with them.⸺It is not half an hour ago, when (in the great hurry and precipitation of a poor devil’s writing for daily bread) I threw a fair sheet, which I had just finished, and carefully wrote out, slap into the fire, instead of the foul one.
Instantly I snatch’d off my wig, and threw it perpendicularly, with all imaginable violence, up to the top of the room—indeed I caught it as it fell⸺but there was an end of the matter; nor do I think anything else in Nature would have given such immediate ease: She, dear Goddess, by an instantaneous impulse, in all provoking cases , determines us to a sally of this or that member—or else she thrusts us into this or that place or posture of body, we know not why⸺But mark, madam, we live amongst riddles and mysteries⸺the most obvious things, which come in our way, have dark sides, which the quickest sight cannot penetrate into; and even the clearest and most exalted understandings amongst us find ourselves puzzled and at a loss in almost every cranny of nature’s works: so that this, like a thousand other things, falls out for us in a way, which though we cannot reason upon it—yet we find the good of it, may it please your reverences and your worships⸺and that’s enough for us.