He stopped, whereupon Larcher, not to be behind, and also without having
recourse to the page, went on:

'Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possest,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,'--

"But I think that hits all men," said Larcher, interrupting himself.
"Everybody has wished himself in somebody else's shoes, now and again,
don't you believe?"

"I have certainly wished myself out of my own shoes," replied Davenport,
almost with vehemence. "I have hated myself and my failures, God knows!
I have wished hard enough that I were not I. But I haven't wished I were
any other person now existing. I wouldn't change selves with this
particular man, or that particular man. It wouldn't be enough to throw
off the burden of my memories, with their clogging effect upon my life
and conduct, and take up the burden of some other man's--though I
should be the gainer even by that, in a thousand cases I could name."

"Oh, I don't exactly mean changing with somebody else," said Larcher.
"We all prefer to remain ourselves, with our own tastes, I suppose. But
we often wish our lot was like somebody else's."

Davenport shook his head. "I don't prefer to remain myself, any more
than to be some man whom I know or have heard of. I am tired of myself;
weary and sick of Murray Davenport. To be a new man, of my own
imagining--that would be something;--to begin afresh, with an
unencumbered personality of my own choosing; to awake some morning and
find that I was not Murray Davenport nor any man now living that I know