sometimes not unproductive, of typhoid fever. Ah, poor Nausicaa
of England! That is a sad sight to some who think about the
present, and have read about the past. It is not a sad sight to
see your old father--tradesman, or clerk, or what not--who has
done good work in his day, and hopes to do some more, sitting by
your old mother, who has done good work in her day--among the
rest, that heaviest work of all, the bringing you into the world
and keeping you in it till now--honest, kindly, cheerful folk
enough, and not inefficient in their own calling; though an
average Northumbrian, or Highlander, or Irish Easterling, beside
carrying a brain of five times the intellectual force, could drive
five such men over the cliff with his bare hands. It is not a sad
sight, I say, to see them sitting about upon those seaside
benches, looking out listlessly at the water, and the ships, and
the sunlight, and enjoying, like so many flies upon a wall, the
novel act of doing nothing. It is not the old for whom wise men
are sad: but for you. Where is your vitality? Where is your
"Lebens-gluckseligkeit," your enjoyment of superfluous life and
power? Why you cannot even dance and sing, till now and then, at
night, perhaps, when you ought to lie safe in bed, but when the
weak brain, after receiving the day's nourishment, has roused
itself a second time into a false excitement of gaslight pleasure.
What there is left of it is all going into that foolish book,
which the womanly element in you, still healthy and alive,
delights in; because it places you in fancy in situations in which
you will never stand, and inspires you with emotions, some of
which, it may be, you had better never feel. Poor Nausicaa--old,
some men think, before you have been ever young.

And now they are going to "develop" you; and let you have your