"Isn't
this like life," he said, after one of our blunders: "a deep yellow fog all
round, with a dim light here and there shining through. You grope your way
on from one lamp to another, and you go up wrong streets and back again;
but you get home at last--there's always light enough for that." After a
short pause he said, quite abruptly, "Tom, do you want to live to be old?"
I said I had never thought on the subject; and he went on, "I dread it more
than I can say. To feel one's powers going, and to end in snuff and stink.
Look at the last days of Scott and Wordsworth, and Southey." I suggested
St. John. "Yes," he said, "that's the right thing, and will do for Bunsen,
and great, tranquil men like him. The longer they live the better for all.
But for an eager, fiery nature like mine, with fierce passions eating one's
life out, it won't do. If I live twenty years I know what will happen to
me. The back of my brain will soften, and I shall most likely go blind."
The Bishop got down somehow by six. The dinner did not last long, for the
family were away, and afterwards we adjourned to the study, and Parson Lot
rose to his best.
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