"Then, how if appetite, be it for real or ideal, should itself fail one after awhile?
Ah, yes! is it of cold always that men die; and on some of us it creeps very gradually.

In truth, I can remember just such a lack-lustre condition of feeling once or twice before.

But I note, that it was accompanied then by an odd indifference, as the thought of them occurred to me, in regard to the sufferings of others--a kind of callousness, so unusual with me, as at once to mark the humour it accompanied as a palpably morbid one [174] that could not last.

Were those sufferings, great or little, I asked myself then, of more real consequence to them than mine to me, as I remind myself that 'nothing that will end is really long'-- long enough to be thought of importance?
But to-day, my own sense of fatigue, the pity I conceive for myself, disposed me strongly to a tenderness for others.

For a moment the whole world seemed to present itself as a hospital of sick persons; many of them sick in mind; all of whom it would be a brutality not to humour, not to indulge.
"Why, when I went out to walk off my wayward fancies, did I confront the very sort of incident (my unfortunate genius had surely beckoned it from afar to vex me) likely to irritate them further?
A party of men were coming down the street.