A MANIAC'S CONFESSION.
I AM a maniac. I have for some years been the victim of a peculiar insanity, which has greatly distressed several of my friends and relatives. They generally soften it in their talk by the name monomania; but they do not hesitate to aver, when speaking their minds, that it has in truth infected my whole soul, and made me incapable of doing or thinking anything useful or rational. This sad delusion, which they endeavor to remove by serious advice, by playful banter, or by seeming to take an interest in my folly for a moment, is encountered with great acrimony by less gentle friends. They who are not bound to me by blood or intimacy—and some who are—deride, insult, and revile me in every way for my subjection to a mental aberration which is rapidly consuming a pretty property, more than average talents, and unrivalled opportunities.
Of course, like all madmen, I think just the reverse. When the fit is on me, I assert that this fever—this madness—far from being the bane of my life, is a blessing to it; that I am habitually devoting money, time, and wits to an object at once beautiful and elevating; that I have found consolation in its visions for many sufferings, which all the amusements offered me by my revilers are utterly inadequate to touch. I declare that I have found a better investment for my money than all the West Virginia coal companies that ever sunk oil-wells, and am making more useful acquaintances than if I danced every German during the season. I have not been shut up yet, for my friends know that, if they attempt any such thing, the Finance Committee on the Harvard Memorial and Alumni Hall are in possession of a bond conveying all my money to them; so I am still at large, scolded by my brother Henry, laughed at by my sister Bathsheba, the aversion of Beacon Street, and the scorn of Winthrop Square.
The other day, I took a little journey to Europe, with the view of feeding my madness on that whereby it grows. My friends did not choose to stop me, for they thought the charms of foreign travel might win me from my waywardness. To be sure, when they found, on my return, that I had never left England, they were convinced, if never before, that I was hopelessly insane; for what American, they very sanely said, "would stay in that dull, dingy island, among those stupid, cowardly bullies, when he might live in that lovely Paris, the most interesting and amusing city in the world, unless he were incomprehensibly mad." And, in truth, I begin to think I must be mad, when I find myself, like the man shut up with eleven obstinate jurymen, alone in thinking England a gay, beautiful, happy country, teeming with every gratification of art or nature, and inhabited by a manly, generous, and intelligent race; and that life in Paris, as Americans live it, is a senseless rush after excitement, where comfort is abandoned for unreal luxury, and society for vicious boon-companionship. Still I am very willing to admit that my special mania can be very capitally gratified in Paris, and I am meditating a little trip there for the purpose.
On my return from England, I was observed to be in great distress about a certain box that I missed at Liverpool, looked for at Halifax, and all but lost at East Boston; and when it was found and opened, it only contained two suits of clothes, when, as Henry said, "I might have brought forty, the only thing they did have decent in England," and all the rest—mad, mad! I beg the readers of the Atlantic to listen to my humble confession of madness, as it culminated in this box.
It is this. The most valuable property a man can possibly have is books; if he has a hundred or a thousand dollars to spare, he had better at once put
