can answer your question. The difficulty is that, to speak truly, I
have absolutely nothing to tell. I wonder now--and it was that made
me pause--how it has happened that, throughout my life, I have been
bored by--nothing. As if it would not have been quite as natural,
quite as easy, and far pleasanter, to have been amused by that same
nothing--which has been my life. The fact is, my dear fellow, that I
have had no deep sorrow to bear, neither have I been happy. I have
not been extraordinarily successful, and have drawn none of the
prizes of life. But I am well aware that, in this respect, my lot
resembles that of thousands of other men. I have always been obliged
to work. I have earned my bread by the sweat of my brow. I have had
money difficulties; I have even had a hopeless passion--but what
then? every one has had that. Besides, that was in bygone days; I
have learned to bear it, and to forget. What pains and angers me is,
to have to confess that my life has been spent without satisfaction
and without happiness."

He paused an instant, and then resumed, more calmly: "A, few years
ago I was foolish enough to believe that things might in the end
turn out better. I was a professor with a very moderate salary at
the school at Elmira. I taught all I knew, and much that I had to
learn in order to be able to teach it--Greek and Latin, German and
French, mathematics and physical sciences. During the so-called
play-hours, I even gave music lessons. In the course of the whole
day there were few moments of liberty for me. I was perpetually
surrounded by a crowd of rough, ill-bred boys, whose only object
during lessons was to catch me making a fault in English. When
evening came, I was quite worn out; still, I could always find time
to dream for half an hour or so with my eyes open before going to
bed. Then all my desires were accomplished, and I was supremely