and art can communicate to the slaves of vice.

I found out the secret of employing my mind. I said, "I am shut up for
half the day in total darkness, without any external source of
amusement; the other half I spend in the midst of noise, turbulence,
and, confusion. What then? Can I not draw amusement from the stores of
my own mind? Is it not freighted with various knowledge? Have I not been
employed from my infancy in gratifying an insatiable curiosity? When
should I derive benefit from these superior advantages, if not at
present?" Accordingly I tasked the stores of my memory, and my powers of
invention. I amused myself with recollecting the history of my life. By
degrees I called to mind a number of minute circumstances, which, but
for this exercise, would have been for ever forgotten. I repassed in my
thoughts whole conversations, I recollected their subjects, their
arrangement, their incidents, frequently their very words. I mused upon
these ideas, till I was totally absorbed in thought. I repeated them,
till my mind glowed with enthusiasm. I had my different employments,
fitted for the solitude of the night, in which I could give full scope
to the impulses of my mind; and for the uproar of the day, in which my
chief object was, to be insensible to the disorder with which I was
surrounded.

By degrees I quitted my own story, and employed myself in imaginary
adventures. I figured to myself every situation in which I could be
placed, and conceived the conduct to be observed in each. Thus scenes of
insult and danger, of tenderness and oppression, became familiar to me.
In fancy I often passed the awful hour of dissolving nature. In some of
my reveries I boiled with impetuous indignation, and in others patiently
collected the whole force of my mind for some fearful encounter. I
cultivated the powers of oratory suited to these different states, and