The
one reputation I deprecate is that of having been ill-used. I
deprecate this because it would tend to depress and discourage others
from playing the game that I have played. I will therefore forestall
misconception on this head.
As regards general good-fortune, I am nearly fifty-five years old and
for the last thirty years have never been laid up with illness nor
had any physical pain that I can remember, not even toothache.
Except sometimes, when a little over-driven, I have had uninterrupted
good health ever since I was about five-and-twenty.
Of mental suffering I have had my share--as who has not?--but most of
what I have suffered has been, though I did not think so at the time,
either imaginary, or unnecessary and, so far, it has been soon
forgotten. It has been much less than it very easily might have been
if the luck had not now and again gone with me, and probably I have
suffered less than most people, take it all round. Like every one
else, however, I have the scars of old wounds; very few of these
wounds were caused by anything which was essential in the nature of
things; most, if not all of them, have been due to faults of heart
and head on my own part and on that of others which, one would have
thought, might have been easily avoided if in practice it had not
turned out otherwise.
For many years I was in a good deal of money difficulty, but since my
father's death I have had no trouble on this score--greatly
otherwise.
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