That the whole world should have been made for _me_
alone--that London should have been built only in order that _I_ might
enjoy the vast heroic spectacle of its burning--that all history, and
all civilisation should have existed only in order to accumulate for
_my_ pleasures its inventions and facilities, its stores of purple and
wine, of spices and gold--no more extraordinary does it all seem to me
than to some little unreflecting Duke of my former days seemed the
possessing of lands which his remote forefathers seized, and slew the
occupiers: nor, in reality, is it even so extraordinary, I being alone.
But what sometimes strikes me with some surprise is, not that the
present condition of the world, with one sole master, should seem the
common-place and natural condition, but that it should have come to seem
_so_ common-place and natural--in nine months. The mind of Adam Jeffson
is adaptable.
* * * * *
I sat a long time thinking such things by my bed that night, till
finally I was disposed to sleep there.
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