distressed me at first, but in a little time I began to get reconciled
to such a state, and even to discover that it had certain advantages,
the chief of which was that the tumult of my mind was over for a season,
so that I craved for nothing very eagerly. My friends advised me to do
no work; but not wishing to eat the bread of idleness--although the
bread was little now, as I had little appetite--I made it a rule to go
every morning to the workhouse, and occupy myself for two or three hours
with some light, mechanical task which put no strain on me, physical or
mental. Even this playing at work fatigued me. Then, after changing my
dress, I would repair to the music-room to resume my search after hidden
knowledge in any books that happened to be there; for I could read now,
a result which my sweet schoolmistress had been the first to see, and at
once she had abandoned the lessons I had loved so much, leaving me to
wander at will, but without a guide, in that wilderness of a strange
literature. I had never been to the library, and did not even know in
what part of the house it was situated; nor had I ever expressed a wish
to see it. And that for two reasons: one was, that I had already
half-resolved--my resolutions were usually of that complexion--never to
run the risk of appearing desirous of knowing too much; the other and
weightier reason was, that I had never loved libraries. They oppress me
with a painful sense of my mental inferiority; for all those tens of
thousands of volumes, containing so much important but unappreciated
matter, seem to have a kind of collective existence, and to look down on
me, like a man with great, staring, owlish eyes, as an intruder on
sacred ground--a barbarian, whose proper place is in the woods. It is a
mere fancy, I know, but it distresses me, and I prefer not to put myself
in the way of it. Once in a book I met with a scornful passage about
people with "bodily constitutions like those of horses, and small
brains," which made me blush painfully; but in the very next passage the
writer makes amends, saying that a man ought to think himself well off