Sometimes they are
peevish and ill-at-ease, disagreeably afflicted and obviously broken;
and even when they bear their affliction bravely and courageously, it
is a melancholy business. It seems a sad kind of spitefulness in nature
that persons should have so much trouble to bear when they are tired
and faint-hearted and only wish for repose. One feels then that it
ought to be somehow arranged that people should have their share of
trouble in youth or manhood, when trouble is not wholly uninteresting,
and when there is even a sort of grim pleasure in fighting it; but when
it comes to having no distractions, to being obliged to sit still and
suffer with no hope of alleviation; when affection dies down like an
expiring flame, and the failing nature seems involved in a helpless
sort of selfishness, planning for little comforts, enjoying tiny
pleasures with a sort of childlike greediness, it is a very pitiful
thing, I remember an old lady who lived with her son in a small
parsonage full of boisterous children. They were very good to her, but
she was sadly in the way. She herself had lost almost all interest in
life; she was deaf and infirm and cross. She was condemned to eat the
plainest of food; and I used to see her mumbling little slices of stale
bread, and looking with malignant envy at the children eating big
hunches of heavy cake. It was impossible to give her any pleasure, and
she had no sort of intention of pleasing anyone else.
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