Whatever might be the effect of this state of affairs upon the other
employés of the office and upon the general public, it was certainly
disastrous to the private interests of Henry Barwood. Naturally of an
unpractical, somewhat morbid disposition, he needed the stimulus of a
business life in which the necessity for action and its results when
performed were constantly apparent. If engaged in his own ventures,
taking risks and devising plans, he might have abandoned his
speculations and fancies, and become a man of affairs. As it was, he
found too much opportunity for their indulgence.

Every day from nine to three he assorted, copied, and made abstracts of
applications and reports, the objects of which were remote, their
expediency questionable, and their ultimate fate problematical. Without
interest in the work and without any particular pressure for its
performance, he dreamed over it, and often awoke from his reveries to
find his figures inaccurate and his sentences meaningless.

Morbid people are probably as incomprehensible to themselves as to
others. The world is viewed by each through the medium of his own
ill-adjusted temperament. Objects are seen in a strangely tinted light,
which is more than suspected to be delusive, yet cannot be decolorized.
Barwood's vision was affected by such a distorting influence. He
discovered subtle meanings in ordinary things or circumstances, in the
manner of a nod from an acquaintance or the tone of a remark, and
brooded over them. He continually scrutinized and questioned his own
motives and those of others.

The mind of every human being is a puzzle to every other. With what is
it occupied when left to its own devices? There is, in Barwood's
handwriting,[1] proof that his brain was filled with a procession of