Hideously frequent is this nonsense now become with me--in streets of
towns--in deep nooks of the country: the invincible assurance that, if I
but turn the head, and glance _there_--at a certain fixed spot--I shall
surely see--I _must_ see--a man. And glance I must, glance I must,
though I perish: and when I glance, though my hairs creep and stiffen
like stirring amobse, yet in my eyes, I know, is monarch indignation
against the intruder, and my neck stands stiff as sovereignty itself,
and on my brow sits more than all the lordship of Persepolis and Iraz.
To what point of wantonness this arrogance of royalty may lead me, I do
not know: I will watch, and see. It is written: 'It is not good for man
to be alone!' But good or no, the arrangement of One planet, One
inhabitant, already seems to me, not merely a natural and proper, but
the _only_ natural and proper, condition; so much so, that any other
arrangement has now, to my mind, a certain improbable, wild, and
far-fetched unreality, like the Utopian schemes of dreamers and
faddists.
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