In the mean time I had gotten myself entangled in the old
sorites of the old sophist,--procrastination. I had suffered my
necessary businesses to accumulate so terribly, that I neglected to
write to any one, till the pain I suffered from not writing made me
waste as many hours in dreaming about it as would have sufficed for the
letter writing of half a life. But there is something beside time
requisite for the writing of a letter--at least with me. My situation
here is indeed a delightful situation; but I feel what I have lost--feel
it deeply--it recurs more often and more painfully than I had
anticipated, indeed so much so, that I scarcely ever feel myself
impelled, that is to say, pleasurably impelled to write to Poole. I used
to feel myself more at home in his great windy parlour than in my own
cottage. We were well suited to each other--my animal spirits corrected
his inclination to melancholy; and there was something both in his
understanding and in his affections, so healthy and manly, that my mind
freshened in his company, and my ideas and habits of thinking acquired
day after day more of substance and reality. Indeed, indeed, my dear,
sir, with tears in my eyes, and with all my heart and soul, I wish it
were as easy for us all to meet as it was when you lived at Upcott. Yet
when I revise the step I have taken, I know not how I could have acted
otherwise than I did act.
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