Once upon a time (no matter when), I was engaged in a pursuit (no matter what), which
could be transacted by myself alone; in which I could have no help; which imposed a
constant strain on the attention, memory, observation, and physical powers; and which
involved an almost fabulous amount of change of place and rapid railway travelling. I
had followed this pursuit through an exceptionally trying winter in an always trying
climate, and had resumed it in England after but a brief repose. Thus it came to be
prolonged until, at length - and, as it seemed, all of a sudden - it so wore me out that I
could not rely, with my usual cheerful confidence, upon myself to achieve the constantly
recurring task, and began to feel (for the first time in my life) giddy, jarred, shaken, faint,
uncertain of voice and sight and tread and touch, and dull of spirit. The medical advice I
sought within a few hours, was given in two words: 'instant rest.' Being accustomed to
observe myself as curiously as if I were another man, and knowing the advice to meet my
only need, I instantly halted in the pursuit of which I speak, and rested.
My intention was, to interpose, as it were, a fly-leaf in the book of my life, in which
nothing should be written from without for a brief season of a few weeks. But some very
singular experiences recorded themselves on this same fly-leaf, and I am going to relate
them literally. I repeat the word: literally.
My first odd experience was of the remarkable coincidence between my case, in the
general mind, and one Mr. Merdle's as I find it recorded in a work of fiction called
LITTLE DORRIT. To be sure, Mr. Merdle was a swindler, forger, and thief, and my
calling had been of a less harmful (and less remunerative) nature; but it was all one for
that.
Here is Mr. Merdle's case:
'At first, he was dead of all the diseases that ever were known, and of several bran-new
maladies invented with the speed of Light to meet the demand of the occasion. He had
concealed a dropsy from infancy, he had inherited a large estate of water on the chest
from his grandfather, he had had an operation performed upon him every morning of his
life for eighteen years, he had been subject to the explosion of important veins in his
body after the manner of fireworks, he had had something the matter with his lungs, he
had had something the matter with his heart, he had had something the matter with his
brain. Five hundred people who sat down to breakfast entirely uninformed on the whole
subject, believed before they had done breakfast, that they privately and personally knew
Physician to have said to Mr. Merdle, "You must expect to go out, some day, like the
snuff of a candle;" and that they knew Mr. Merdle to have said to Physician, "A man can
die but once." By about eleven o'clock in the forenoon, something the matter with the
brain, became the favourite theory against the field; and by twelve the something had
been distinctly ascertained to be "Pressure."
