Tailors and time work wonders; and in a short time my country friends would hardly have known me. I soon settled down into courses of dissolute life. I had no restraints. I imagined myself a martyr to love, and was, indeed, unhappy; persuaded myself that I had no hope, and particularly when about half drunk, I sighed like a furnace.
I spent one year, one precious year, of my youth in this manner. I was desperate; lived away from home, and only visited my friends when I was in want of money.
Sometimes, when my stomach was deranged, and my brain flighty, I meditated self-destruction. I was only at ease when rioting in excitement. I kept all sorts of company, and indulged in all sorts of vices. I cannot imagine a more dissolute young man than I was in conduct, who keeps himself this side of penal crime; though it is worthy of remark, that I never recollect having indulged in any vice, unless under artificial stimulus.
I believe my father thought himself a little in the wrong, by suffering such desertion as I met with from all my friends. He pitied me, and in the most affectionate manner persuaded me to return to his house. A word of kindness was to me like manna in the wilderness. I eagerly acceded to his proposal. He paid me every attention, and actually left his business, and travelled with me for two months, and endeavoured to bring my mind back to pleasant reflections; for I was indeed almost a maniac. This was the balm in Gilead to my sick mind. I came to myself, and with my father's permission I went to spend the remainder of my clerkship at the celebrated law-school at L——.
I have always had the strongest inducements to do well. After all my errors, before I left home, the friends of our family vied in showing me kindness. I was in a constant round of the most refined society. To be sure, I had the éclat of having been disappointed in love with the finest girl in the country; and any thing about love is interesting; and to be crazy or drunk for love, is not so bad as to be so for any other cause.
I was grateful for these favors and attentions; and when I left home for the law lectures, I really believe all my friends were firmly persuaded that I was an instance of wonderful reformation. So credulous and forgiving are our friends for the sake of what they know we can and ought to be!
CHAPTER XIV.
I wish my reader could sympathize with me, upon coming thus far in my history. I am aware that I have written nothing of much importance, so far as incident may be looked for. But, to my view, life is rather a succession of feelings and sentiments, than of actions. It fills me with inexpressible satisfaction, to find that I have mastered my adversaries, idleness and irresolution, in this instance, and have come to this point. It is the longest and most arduous task I have ever performed, for it is a work of continued exertion. I have never flagged from it; and the idea that some good inferences may be drawn from these pages, by the young among my own countrymen, so that my life may not pass away without one useful act, one deed of positive good, has supported me.
Let every idler, if he wishes to enjoy one happy hour, set about doing something, no matter what. Let him undertake to commit a chapter in the Bible to memory, or copy some piece of writing, or to make any intellectual exertion; but let it be definite; not take a walk, or a journey, or any thing that requires movement of the body, but still, continued, uninterrupted study and attention. Idlers are the veriest busy-bodies we know, and always flying about in some shape or other. They are idle with the appearance of industry, and deceive every body but themselves. While the world looks on, and wonders at their diligence, they are passing hours, days, years, of the most insupportable care, the care of finding something to do. I know something of the tedium of this life, and confess, that the hours spent in these records have been the happiest of my life, because I have had an end, an object, constantly in view.
My debts all paid once more, my character again rëinstated, my purse well supplied, my wardrobe in the newest fashion, and abundant as I could pack, behold the rustic of a year's standing, the lover, whose heart was broken, getting into the stage for L——, the place of the celebrated law-school; while Thomas, dressed in the self-same suit in which I had arrived some year before, is packing the trunks on behind. Alas! the association of that event and those pantaloons! Reader, they did put me in mind of the romantic hills and valley of N——, and then of Alice Clair; though to get to these affecting thoughts, I had to pass through the tailor's shop where they were made. There is but a step from the sublime to the ridiculous, and so backward from the ridiculous to the sublime.