[CHAPTER III.]
THE EMPLOYMENTS OF A YOUNG GENTLEMAN OF FORTUNE.
And now, having mentioned tedium of existence as being an evil to which I soon felt myself subject, I will say that it was one I found more oppressive than the reader can readily imagine. I had nothing in the world to do, and, as it happened, my disposition did not lead me to seek any thing. I was, in a word, the very man my sister had so reproachfully called me in our first conversation—that is, the laziest man in all Virginia; and, upon reflection, I can think of no person in the world who would bear a comparison with me in that particular, except myself. "None but himself can be his parallel," as somebody or other says, I don't know who, a sentiment that is supposed to be absurd, inasmuch as it involves an impossibility, but which becomes good sense when applied to me. In my original condition, in the body in which I was first introduced to life, I certainly had a great aversion to all troublesome employments, whether of business or amusement, being supposed by many persons to be then what as many considered me now—to wit, the laziest man in my state. Whether I was lazier as Sheppard Lee the Jerseyman or Arthur Megrim the Virginian, I am not able to say. In both cases indolence was at the bottom of all my troubles. There was this difference, however, between the two conditions, that whereas I had felt in one the evils of laziness to a poor man, I was now to discover in the other what were its evils to a man of fortune.
My chief employments in the body of Mr. Arthur Megrim were eating and sleeping; and I certainly should have done nothing else, had I been allowed to follow my own humours. Eating and sleeping, therefore, consumed the greater portion of my time; but it could not consume all; nor could the residue be filled up by the occasional excursions in my curricle, and the still more unfrequent strolls through the village, into which I was driven by my affectionate sister, or cajoled by her coadjutor, the doctor, in their zealous care of my digestive apparatus. As for visits and visitations, I abhorred them all, whether they related to the bustling young gentlemen of the neighbourhood, or the loquacious ladies, old and young, who cultivated the friendship of my sister.
Employ myself, however, as I might, there always remained a portion of each day which I could not get rid of, either in bed or at the table. On such occasions I was devoured by ennui, and thought that even existence was an infliction—that it was hard work to live. According to my sister's account, I was a scholar and a genius; in which case I ought to have found employment enough of an intellectual nature, either in books or the reflections of my own mind. I certainly had a very large and fine library in my house, and there was scarce a week passed by in which I did not receive a huge bundle of the newest publications from a book-seller, who had long had it in charge thus to supply me. Of these I usually read the title-pages, and then turned them over to my sister, or, which was more common, lent them to my neighbours, who, male and female together, came flocking to borrow the day after, and sometimes the day before, the arrival of each package, taking good care to rob me of those that were most interesting. The truth is, if I ever had had the power of reading, I had now lost it. Books only set me nodding.
As for exercising my mind in reflections of its own, that was even more laborious than reading; and I contracted a dislike to it, particularly as my mind wore itself out every night in dreaming, that being a result of the goodly suppers I used to eat. It is true, that I one day fell into a sudden ferment, and being inspired, actually seized upon pen and paper, and wrote a poem in blank verse, forty lines long, with which I was so pleased that I read it to Tibbikens and my sister, both of whom were in raptures with it, the former carrying it off to the editor of the village paper, who printed it with such a eulogium upon its merits, as made me believe Byron was a fool to me, while all the young ladies immediately paid my sister Ann a visit, that they might tell me how they admired the beautiful piece, and lament that I wrote so seldom. I forget what the poem was about; but I remember I was so delighted with the praise bestowed on it, that I resolved to write another, which, however, I did not do, having unfortunately begun it in rhyme, which was difficult, and my fit of inspiration and energy having left me before I got through with my next dinner. It was my writing verses, I suppose, that caused me to be called a genius; but it seems I was too lazy to be inspired more than once or twice a year.
I relapsed into ennui, and, truly, I became more tired of it before it was done with me, than was ever a labourer of his hod or mattock.