Methuen, Mr.
Duckworth, Mr. J.M. Dent, and Mr. John Lane.
To Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co. (_the owners of the copyright_) for
permission to include letters of Thackeray to Mrs. Brookfield.
To Messrs. Gibbings & Co. for my extracts from the admirable translation
of Sainte-Beuve.
And to all authors, living and dead, who have assembled in this place to
entertain the sick and the weary.
H.B.
FOREWORD
"It is worth," said Dr. Johnson, "a thousand pounds a year to have the
habit of looking on the bright side of things."
It is worth more than all money to have the capacity, the power, the
will to see the bright side of things, to possess the assurance that
there is a veritable and persisting bright side of things, when the mind
is gloomed by physical weakness and the heart is conscious only of
languor and distress. At such a dull time even a long-established habit
may desert us; with our faculties clouded and obscured we are tempted to
doubt the entire philosophy of our former life; we sink down into the
sheets of discomfort, and roll our heads restlessly on the pillow of
discontent; we almost extract a morbid satisfaction from the fuliginous
surrenderings of pessimism. Mrs. Gummidge at our bedside might be as
unwelcome as Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, or Zophar the
Naamathite; but there is a Widow in the soul of all men as mournful and
lugubrious as the tearful sister of Mr.
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