eager to have me with them, I have had so many more years heaped upon me
within this month, that I have not the conscience to trouble young
people, when I can no longer be as juvenile as they are. Indeed I shall
think myself decrepit, till I again saunter into the garden in my
slippers and without my hat in all weathers,--a point I am determined to
regain if possible; for even this experience cannot make me resign my
temperance and my hardiness. I am tired of the world, its politics, its
pursuits, and its pleasures; but it will cost me some struggles before I
submit to be tender and careful. Christ! Can I ever stoop to the regimen
of old age? I do not wish to dress up a withered person, nor drag it
about to public places; but to sit in one's room, clothed warmly,
expecting visits from folks I don't wish to see, and tended and nattered
by relations impatient for one's death! Let the gout do its worse as
expeditiously as it can; it would be more welcome in my stomach than in
my limbs. I am not made to bear a course of nonsense and advice, but
must play the fool in my own way to the last, alone with all my heart,
if I cannot be with the very few I wished to see: but, to depend for
comfort on others, who would be no comfort to me; this surely is not a
state to be preferred to death: and nobody can have truly enjoyed the
advantages of youth, health, and spirits, who is content to exist
without the two last, which alone bear any resemblance to the first.

You see how difficult it is to conquer my proud spirit: low and weak as
I am, I think my resolution and perseverance will get the better, and
that I shall still be a gay shadow; at least, I will impose any severity
upon myself, rather than humour the gout, and sink into that indulgence
with which most people treat it. Bodily liberty is as dear to me as
mental, and I would as soon flatter any other tyrant as the gout, my
Whiggism extending as much to my health as to my principles, and being
as willing to part with life, when I cannot preserve it, as your uncle