Roundabout Papers - Penn State University

your writings, and savagely rush at, goad, poke, toss upin the air, kick, and trample on?”I couldn’t help myself. I knew I ought not to do it. Itold her the whole story, between the entrees and theroast. The wound began to bleed again. The horrid pangwas there, as keen and as fresh as ever. If I live half aslong as Tithonus,* that crack across my heart can neverbe cured. There are wrongs and griefs that can’t bemended. It is all very well of you, my dear Mrs. G., tosay that this spirit is unchristian, and that we ought toforgive and forget, and so forth. How can I forget atwill? How forgive? I can forgive the occasional waiterwho broke my beautiful old decanter at that very dinner.I am not going to do him any injury. But all thepowers on earth can’t make that claret-jug whole.So, you see, I told the lady the inevitable story. I wasegotistical. I was selfish, no doubt; but I was natural,and was telling the truth. You say you are angry with aman for talking about himself. It is because you yourselfare selfish, that that other person’s Self does notThackerayinterest you. Be interested by other people and withtheir affairs. Let them prattle and talk to you, as I domy dear old egotists just mentioned. When you havehad enough of them, and sudden hazes come over youreyes, lay down the volume; pop out the candle, anddormez bien. I should like to write a nightcap book—abook that you can muse over, that you can smile over,that you can yawn over—a book of which you can say,“Well, this man is so and so and so and so; but he has afriendly heart (although some wiseacres have paintedhim as black as bogey), and you may trust what hesays.” I should like to touch you sometimes with a reminiscencethat shall waken your sympathy, and makeyou say, Io anche have so thought, felt, smiled, suffered.Now, how is this to be done except by egotism?Linea recta brevissima. That right line “I” is the veryshortest, simplest, straightforwardest means of communicationbetween us, and stands for what it is worthand no more. Sometimes authors say, “The present writerhas often remarked;” or “The undersigned has observed;”* “Tithonus,” by Tennyson, had appeared in the preceding (the or “Mr. Roundabout presents his compliments to the2nd) number of the Cornhill Magazine.13