第8章 ON BEING IN THE BLUES.(1)

I can enjoy feeling melancholy,and there is a good deal of satisfaction about being thoroughly miserable;but nobody likes a fit of the blues.Nevertheless,everybody has them;notwithstanding which,nobody can tell why.There is no accounting for them.You are just as likely to have one on the day after you have come into a large fortune as on the day after you have left your new silk umbrella in the train.Its effect upon you is somewhat similar to what would probably be produced by a combined attack of toothache,indigestion,and cold in the head.You become stupid,restless,and irritable;rude to strangers and dangerous toward your friends;clumsy,maudlin,and quarrelsome;a nuisance to yourself and everybody about you.

While it is on you can do nothing and think of nothing,though feeling at the time bound to do something.You can't sit still so put on your hat and go for a walk;but before you get to the corner of the street you wish you hadn't come out and you turn back.You open a book and try to read,but you find Shakespeare trite and commonplace,Dickens is dull and prosy,Thackeray a bore,and Carlyle too sentimental.You throw the book aside and call the author names.Then you "shoo"the cat out of the room and kick the door to after her.You think you will write your letters,but after sticking at "Dearest Auntie:I find I have five minutes to spare,and so hasten to write to you,"for a quarter of an hour,without being able to think of another sentence,you tumble the paper into the desk,fling the wet pen down upon the table-cloth,and start up with the resolution of going to see the Thompsons.While pulling on your gloves,however,it occurs to you that the Thompsons are idiots;that they never have supper;and that you will be expected to jump the baby.You curse the Thompsons and decide not to go.

By this time you feel completely crushed.You bury your face in your hands and think you would like to die and go to heaven.You picture to yourself your own sick-bed,with all your friends and relations standing round you weeping.You bless them all,especially the young and pretty ones.They will value you when you are gone,so you say to yourself,and learn too late what they have lost;and you bitterly contrast their presumed regard for you then with their decided want of veneration now.

These reflections make you feel a little more cheerful,but only for a brief period;for the next moment you think what a fool you must be to imagine for an instant that anybody would be sorry at anything that might happen to you.Who would care two straws (whatever precise amount of care two straws may represent)whether you are blown up,or hung up,or married,or drowned?Nobody cares for you.You never have been properly appreciated,never met with your due deserts in any one particular.You review the whole of your past life,and it is painfully apparent that you have been ill-used from your cradle.

Half an hour's indulgence in these considerations works you up into a state of savage fury against everybody and everything,especially yourself,whom anatomical reasons alone prevent your kicking.

Bed-time at last comes,to save you from doing something rash,and you spring upstairs,throw off your clothes,leaving them strewn all over the room,blow out the candle,and jump into bed as if you had backed yourself for a heavy wager to do the whole thing against time.There you toss and tumble about for a couple of hours or so,varying the monotony by occasionally jerking the clothes off and getting out and putting them on again.At length you drop into an uneasy and fitful slumber,have bad dreams,and wake up late the next morning.

At least,this is all we poor single men can do under the circumstances.Married men bully their wives,grumble at the dinner,and insist on the children's going to bed.All of which,creating,as it does,a good deal of disturbance in the house,must be a great relief to the feelings of a man in the blues,rows being the only form of amusement in which he can take any interest.

The symptoms of the infirmity are much the same in every case,but the affliction itself is variously termed.The poet says that "a feeling of sadness comes o'er him."'Arry refers to the heavings of his wayward heart by confiding to Jimee that he has "got the blooming hump."Your sister doesn't know what is the matter with her to-night.