It is injurious to be always treated as if something were the matter
with us. It is health-giving to be dealt with as if we were healthy,
and the man who imagines his wits are failing becomes stronger and
sounder by being entrusted with a difficult problem than by all the
assurances of a doctor.
They are poor creatures who are always craving for pity. If we are
sick, let us prefer conversation upon any subject rather than upon
ourselves. Let it turn on matters that lie outside the dark chamber,
upon the last new discovery, or the last new idea. So shall we seem
still to be linked to the living world. By perpetually asking for
sympathy an end is put to real friendship. The friend is afraid to
intrude anything which has no direct reference to the patient's
condition lest it should be thought irrelevant. No love even can long
endure without complaint, silent it may be, an invalid who is entirely
self-centred; and what an agony it is to know that we are tended simply
as a duty by those who are nearest to us, and that they will really be
relieved when we have departed! From this torture we may be saved if we
early apprentice ourselves to the art of self-suppression and sternly
apply the gag to eloquence upon our own woes.
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