Give up dreams, old boy, and take to something useful.

You might go back to your fiction writing; you seem to have leanings that way, and you know you need not publish the stories, except privately for the edification of your friends." With this Parthian shaft Bickley took his departure to make a job of Widow Jenkins's legs.
I took his advice.

During the next few months I did write something which occupied my thoughts for a while, more or less.

It lies in my safe to this minute, for somehow I have never been able to make up my mind to burn what cost me so much physical and mental toil.
When it was finished my melancholy returned to me with added force.
Everything in the house took a tongue and cried to me of past days.
Its walls echoed a voice that I could never hear again; in the very looking-glasses I saw the reflection of a lost presence.

Although I had moved myself for the purposes of sleep to a little room at the further end of the building, footsteps seemed to creep about my bed at night and I heard the rustle of a remembered dress without the door.