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In proportion as the years both lessen and shorten, I set more count upon their periods, and would fain lay my ineffectual finger upon the spoke of the great wheel.

Whatsoever thwarts, or puts me out of my way, brings death into my mind.

My household-gods plant a terrible fixed foot, and are not rooted up without blood.

My heart is as dry as that spring sometimes proves in a thirsty August, when I revert to the space that is between us; a length of passage enough to render obsolete the phrases of our English letters before they can reach you.

Formerly, I thought that death was wearing out,--I stood ramparted about with so many healthy friends.

Come back, before I am grown into a very old man, so as you shall hardly know me.

Not childhood alone, but the young man till thirty, never feels practically that he is mortal.

Every man hath two birth-days: two days, at least, in every year, which set him upon revolving the lapse of time, as it affects his mortal duration.

Expect no healthy conclusions from me this month, reader; I can offer you only sick men's dreams.

Competence to age is supplementary youth; a sorry supplement indeed, but I fear the best that is to be had.

A thing was worth buying then, when we felt the money that we paid for it.

Besides my daylight servitude, I served over again all night in my sleep, and would awake with terrors of imaginary false entries, errors in my accounts, and the like.

Independently of the rigours of attendance, I have ever been haunted with a sense (perhaps a mere caprice) of incapacity for business.

The phantom of the next day, with the dreary five to follow, sate as a load upon my poor Sabbath recreations.

From a poor man, poor in Time, I was suddenly lifted up into a vast revenue; I could see no end of my possessions; I wanted some steward, or judicious bailiff, to manage my estates in Time for me.

It is Lucretian pleasure to behold the poor drudges, whom I have left behind in the world, carking and caring; like horses in a mill, drudging on in the same eternal round--and what is it all for?

The partners, and the clerks, with whom I had for so many years, and for so many hours in each day of the year, been closely associated--being suddenly removed from them--they seemed as dead to me.

How sickness enlarges the dimensions of a man's self to himself! he is his own exclusive object.