On feeling the symptoms of this horary visitation, I
regularly rushed into the streets, on the principle that some
alleviation of misery is always to be found in fellow-suffering. This
maxim I invariably found false, like every other piece of the boasted
wisdom of mankind. I found the suffering infinitely increased by the
association with my fellow-fashionables. A man might as well have fled
from his chamber to enjoy comfort in the wards of an hospital. In one of
my marches up and down the _pave_ of St. James's Street, that treadmill
of gentlemen convicted in the penalty of having nothing to do, I lounged
into the little hotel of the Guards, that stands beside the great hotel
of the gamblers, like a babe under its mamma's wing--the likeness
admirable, though the scale diminutive. That "hour too many," cost me
three games of billiards, my bachelor's house, and one thousand pounds.
This price of sixty minutes startled me a little; and, for a week, I
meditated with some seriousness on the superior gaiety of a life spent
in paving the streets, driving a wagon, or answering the knocker of a
door.
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