The yellow book: an illustrated quarterly (8.1896)

The Quest of Sorrow
By Mrs. Ernest Leverson

I
T T is rather strange, in a man of my temperament, that I did not
i discover the void in my life until I was eighteen years old.
And then I found out that I had missed a beautiful and wonderful
experience.
I had never known grief. Sadness had shunned me, pain had
left me untouched ; I could hardly imagine the sensation of being
unhappy. And the desire arose in me to have this experience ;
without which, it seemed to me, that I was not complete. I
wanted to be miserable, despairing : a Pessimist ! I craved to
feel that gnawing fox, Anxiety, at my heart ; I wanted my
friends (most of whom had been, at some time or other, more or
less heartbroken) to press my hand with sympathetic looks, to
avoid the subject of my trouble, from delicacy ; or, better still, to
have long, hopeless talks with me about it, at midnight. I thirsted
for salt tears; I longed to clasp Sorrow in my arms and press her
pale lips to mine.
Now this wish was not so easily fulfilled as might be supposed,
for I was born with those natural and accidental advantages that
militate most against failure and depression. There was my
appearance