I was much overworked.  It was not the work itself which was such a trial, but the time it consumed.  At best, I had but a clear space of an hour, or an hour and a half at home, and to slave merely for this seemed such a mockery!  Day after day sped swiftly by, made up of nothing but this infernal drudgery, and I said to myself—­Is this life?  But I made up my mind that never would I give myself tongue.  I clapped a muzzle on my mouth.  Had I followed my own natural bent, I should have become expressive about what I had to endure, but I found that expression reacts on him who expresses and intensifies what is expressed.  If we break out into rhetoric over a toothache, the pangs are not the easier, but the worse to be borne.

I naturally contracted a habit of looking forward from the present moment to one beyond.  The whole week seemed to exist for the Sunday.  On Monday morning I began counting the hours till Sunday should arrive.  The consequence was, that when it came, it was not enjoyed properly, and I wasted it in noting the swiftness of its flight.  Oh, how absurd is man!  If we were to reckon up all the moments which we really enjoy for their own sake, how few should we find them to be!  The greatest part, far the greatest part, of our lives is spent in dreaming over the morrow, and when it comes, it, too, is consumed in the anticipation of a brighter morrow, and so the cheat is prolonged, even to the grave.  This tendency, unconquerable though it may appear to be, can to a great extent at any rate, be overcome by strenuous discipline.  I tried to blind myself to the future, and many and many a time, as I walked along that dreary New Road or Old St. Pancras Road, have I striven to compel myself not to look at the image of Hampstead Heath or Regent’s Park, as yet six days in front of me, but to get what I could out of what was then with me.

The instinct which leads us perpetually to compare what we are with what we might be is no doubt of enormous value, and is the spring which prompts all action, but, like every instinct, it is the source of greatest danger.  I remember the day and the very spot on which it flashed into me, like a sudden burst of the sun’s rays, that I had no right to this or that—­to so much happiness, or even so much virtue.  What title-deeds could I show for such a right?  Straightway it seemed as if the centre of a whole system of dissatisfaction were removed, and as if the system collapsed.  God, creating from His infinite resources a whole infinitude of beings, had created me with a definite position on the scale, and that position only could I claim.  Cease the trick of contrast.  If I can by any means get myself to consider myself alone without reference to others, discontent will vanish.  I walk this Old St. Pancras Road on foot—­ another rides.  Keep out of view him who rides and all persons riding, and I shall not complain that I tramp in the wet.  So also when I think how small and weak I am.