For five months past my mind has been strangely shut up. I have taken
the paper with the intention to write to you many times, but it has been
one blank feeling;--one blank idealess feeling. I had nothing to
say;--could say nothing. How dearly I love you, my very dreams make
known to me. I will not trouble you with the gloomy tale of my health.
When I am awake, by patience, employment, effort of mind, and walking, I
can keep the Fiend at arm's length, but the night is my Hell!--sleep my
tormenting Angel. Three nights out of four, I fall asleep, struggling to
lie awake, and my frequent night-screams have almost made me a nuisance
in my own house. Dreams with me are no shadows, but the very calamities
of my life. * * *
In the hope of drawing the gout, if gout it should be, into my feet, I
walked previously to my getting into the coach at Perth, 263 miles, in
eight days, with no unpleasant fatigue; and if I could do you any
service by coming to town, and there were no coaches, I would undertake
to be with you, on foot in seven days. I must have strength somewhere.
My head is indefatigably strong: my limbs too are strong: but acid or
not acid, gout or not gout, something there is in my stomach. * * *
To diversify this dusky letter, I will write an "Epitaph", which I
composed in my sleep for myself while dreaming that I was dying.
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