No body, but he who has felt it, can conceive what a plaguing thing it is to have a man’s mind torn asunder by two projects of equal strength, both obstinately pulling in a contrary direction at the same time: for to say nothing of the havock, which by a certain consequence is unavoidably made by it all over the finer system of the nerves, which you know convey the animal spirits and more subtle juices from the heart to the head, and so on⸺it is not to be told in what a degree such a wayward kind of friction works upon the more gross and solid parts, wasting the fat and impairing the strength of a man every time as it goes backwards and forwards.
My father had certainly sunk under this evil, as certainly as he had done under that of my christian name ⸺had he not been rescued out of it, as he was out of that, by a fresh evil⸻the misfortune of my brother Bobby’s death.
What is the life of man! Is it not to shift from side to side?⸻from sorrow to sorrow?⸻to button up one cause of vexation⸻and unbutton another?