INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR
application deadened by the fiendish persistence of the coil of circumstance."
At last the apprenticeship is over and Rosenberg writes[1] exulting:
"Congratulate me! I've cleared out of the shop, I hope for good and all. I’m free—free to do anything, hang myself or anything except work.... I'm very optimistic, now that I don't know what to do, and everything seems topsy-turvy."
A little later comes the reaction:
"I am out of work. I doubt if I feel the better for it, much as the work was distasteful, though I expect it's the hankering thought of the consequences, pecuniary, etc., that bothers me.... All one's thoughts seem to revolve round to one point—death. It is horrible, especially at night, 'in the silence of the midnight'; it seems to clutch at your thought—you can't breathe. Oh, I think, work, work, any work, only to stop one thinking."
But such moods are resisted. At another time he is writing:
"One conceives one's lot (I suppose it's the
- ↑ This and the following extracts are from letters to the same correspondent.
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