deep meaning in the truism of "something being better than
nothing." But is a precise object always necessary to the mind? No: if
it be but occupied, no matter with what. That may easily be done.
I have already tried the sciences, and made abortive attempts in
literature, but I have never yet tried what is called general
reading;--that, thank Heaven, is a resource inexhaustible. I will
henceforth read only for amusement. My first experiment in this way
was on Voyages and Travels, with occasional dippings into Shipwrecks,
Murders, and Ghost-stories. It succeeded beyond my hopes; month after
month passing away like days, and as for days,--I almost fancied that
I could see the sun move. How comfortable, thought I, thus to travel
over the world in my closet! how delightful to double Cape Horn and
cross the African Desert in my rocking-chair,--to traverse Caffraria
and the Mogul's dominions in the same pleasant vehicle! This is living
to some purpose; one day dining on barbecued pigs in Otaheite; the
next in danger of perishing amidst the snows of Terra del Fuego; then
to have a lion cross my path in the heart of Africa; to run for my
life from a wounded rhinoceros, and sit, by mistake, on a sleeping
boa-constrictor;--this, this, said I, is life! Even the dangers of the
sea were but healthful stimulants. If I met with a tornado, it was
only an agreeable variety; water-spouts and ice-islands gave me no
manner of alarm; and I have seldom been more composed than when
catching a whale. In short, the ease with which I thus circumnavigated
the globe, and conversed with all its varieties of inhabitants,
expanded my benevolence; I found every place, and everybody in it,
even to the Hottentots, vastly agreeable. But, alas! I was doomed
to discover that this could not last for ever. Though I was still
curious, there were no longer curiosities; for the world is limited,
and new countries, and new people, like every thing else, wax stale on
acquaintance; even ghosts and hurricanes become at last familiar; and
books grow old, like those who read them.

I was now at what sailors call a dead lift; being too old to build
castles for the future, and too dissatisfied with the life I had
led to look back on the past. In this state of mind, I bought me a
snuffbox; for, as I could not honestly recommend my disjointed self
to any decent woman, it seemed a kind of duty in me to contract such
habits as would effectually prevent my taking in the lad