seen the task that would be mine.

_Jan. 6._--What perfect nonsense it is for doctors to prescribe rest
when rest is out of the question! Asses! They might as well shout to a
man who has a pack of wolves at his heels that what he wants is absolute
quiet. My figures must be out by a certain date; unless they are so, I
shall lose the chance of my lifetime, so how on earth am I to rest? I'll
take a week or so after the trial.

Perhaps I was myself a fool to go to the doctor at all. But I get
nervous and highly-strung when I sit alone at my work at night. It's
not a pain--only a sort of fullness of the head with an occasional mist
over the eyes. I thought perhaps some bromide, or chloral, or something
of the kind might do me good. But stop work? It's absurd to ask such a
thing. It's like a long distance race. You feel queer at first and your
heart thumps and your lungs pant, but if you have only the pluck to keep
on, you get your second wind. I'll stick to my work and wait for my
second wind. If it never comes--all the same, I'll stick to my work. Two
ledgers are done, and I am well on in the third. The rascal has covered
his tracks well, but I pick them up for all that.

_Jan. 9._--I had not meant to go to the doctor again. And yet I have had
to. "Straining my nerves, risking a complete breakdown, even endangering
my sanity." That's a nice sentence to have fired off at one. Well, I'll
stand the strain and I'll take the risk, and so long as I can sit in my
chair and move a pen I'll follow the old sinner's slot.

By the way, I may as well set down here the queer experience which drove
me this second time to the doctor. I'll keep an exact record of my
symptoms and sensations, because they are interesting in themselves--"a
curious psycho-physiological study," says the doctor--and also because I
am perfectly certain that when I am through with them they will all seem
blurred and unreal, like some queer dream betwixt sleeping and waking.
So now, while they are fresh, I will just make a note of them, if only
as a change of thought after the endless figures.

There's an old silver-framed mirror in my room. It was given me by a
friend who had a taste for antiquities, and he, as I happen to know,
picked it up at a sale and had no notion where it came from. It's a
large thing--three feet across and two feet high--and it leans at the
back of a side-table on my left as I write. The frame is flat, about
three inches across, and ver