When the striking clocks summoned him remorselessly to rise and
work he often reeled with dizziness. It seemed to him that the
greatest happiness attainable would be to creep into some dark,
warm corner, out of the sight and memory of men, and lie there
torpid, with a blessed half-consciousness that death was slowly
overcoming him. Of all the sufferings collected into each
four-and-twenty hours this of rising to a new day was the worst.
The one-volume story which he had calculated would take him four
or five weeks was with difficulty finished in two months. March
winds made an invalid of him; at one time he was threatened with
bronchitis, and for several days had to abandon even the effort
to work. In previous winters he had been wont to undergo a good
deal of martyrdom from the London climate, but never in such a
degree as now; mental illness seemed to have enfeebled his body.
It was strange that he succeeded in doing work of any kind, for
he had no hope from the result. This one last effort he would
make, just to complete the undeniableness of his failure, and
then literature should be thrown behind him; what other pursuit
was possible to him he knew not, but perhaps he might discover
some mode of earning a livelihood.
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