The next day I advertised the apparatus for sale, cheap.
CHAPTER VII.
THE NEURASTHENIC FALLS IN LOVE.
In writing this sketch it is the endeavor to carry up the different emotions and characteristics of my life in all their phases, as well as to chronicle the vagaries resulting directly from alleged ailments. To do this without seeming digressions and inconsistencies is not an easy task; therefore this word of explanation seemed apropos.
In the affairs of the heart the neurasthenic is, as some one has said of the heathen Chinee, “peculiar.” As I have lived a life of celibacy so long, I feel free to speak frankly on this matter. After reading this chapter I am sure that no fair reader will picture me as her matinee idol; and I am quite sure that no good woman would undertake the shaky job of making me happy “forever and a day.” She could never learn what I wanted for breakfast. I never know myself, which for the present moment is neither here nor there.
When very adolescent I was engrossed in a few exceedingly tame little love affairs which were of short duration and easy to get over. These little loves are like mumps and whooping-cough and other youthful affections: they seem necessary, but seldom prove serious. Aside from these, I had been proof against the tender passion throughout all that period of my life when, according to the poet, “a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.” While I was getting on in years the love germ was only sleeping, and when it awakened all the lost time was soon made up. I had always admired the female sex collectively and at a distance, but individually no one had ever entered my life until I met Genevieve. The plot thickens! While temporarily—I did everything temporarily—holding a position on one of our daily papers, I suddenly became infatuated with this young lady who occupied a type-writer’s desk near my own. She was a charming girl of twenty and I will dive into the matter by saying that I was madly in love with her. She gave me every reason to believe that there were responsive chords touched in her heart, and that my affection was fully reciprocated. I became wilder every day! I could not be away from this fair creature who had changed the whole current of my being. I was supremely happy and looked at life through spectacles different from any I ever had before. Life had a roseate hue that it had never before possessed. Music was sweeter, flowers were prettier and pictures brighter than ever before. I seemed to be walking around in poetry and at the same time living up near heaven. While all this was true, I was at the same time miserable—a sort of ecstatic misery. It took away my appetite, made sleep impossible and filled my life with wavering hopes and fears. The suspense was killing me! At the first opportunity I threw myself, metaphorically, at her feet, and unburdened myself about in this manner:—
“Darling, you are my love and my life and I cannot, and will not, live without you. What is your answer? Make up your mind before I do something desperate. Don’t let me over-persuade you, loved one, but if you think I can make you happy, say the word. My life is in your hands. If you spurn me I shall pass out of your life forever. Dear one, what will you do? Pray, speak quickly!”
She was listening attentively and I repeated the question that I thought would soon seal my fate: “What will you do?”