Called this evening on my agent—my business as usual. Our strange adventures are the only inheritances of our family that have not diminished.
I shall now smoke two cigars, and get me to bed. The cigars don't keep well here. They get as old as a
donna di quaranti anni
in the sun of Africa. The Havannah are the best;—but neither are so pleasant as a hooka or chiboque. The Turkish tobacco is mild, and their horses entire—two things as they should be. I am so far obliged to this Journal, that it preserves me from verse,—at least from keeping it. I have just thrown a poem into the fire (which it has relighted to my great comfort), and have smoked out of my head the plan of another. I wish I could as easily get rid of thinking, or, at least, the confusion of thought.
Pope's
Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot
, line 197.