You know you can't stand it; you have not a strong head." "It isn't the whisky," I replied; "it's deeper than that.

I fancy it's more mental than bodily." "You've been reading those criticisms again," said Ethelbertha, more sympathetically; "why don't you take my advice and put them on the fire ?" "And it isn't the criticisms," I answered; "they've been quite flattering of late--one or two of them." "Well, what is it ?" said Ethelbertha; "there must be something to account for it." "No, there isn't," I replied; "that's the remarkable thing about it; I can only describe it as a strange feeling of unrest that seems to have taken possession of me." Ethelbertha glanced across at me with a somewhat curious expression, I thought; but as she said nothing, I continued the argument myself.
"This aching monotony of life, these days of peaceful, uneventful felicity, they appal one." "I should not grumble at them," said Ethelbertha; "we might get some of the other sort, and like them still less." "I'm not so sure of that," I replied.

"In a life of continuous joy, I can imagine even pain coming as a welcome variation.

I wonder sometimes whether the saints in heaven do not occasionally feel the continual serenity a burden.

To myself a life of endless bliss, uninterrupted by a single contrasting note, would, I feel, grow maddening.