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To muse for long unwearied hours, with my attention riveted to some
frivolous device on the margin, or in the typography of a book; to
become absorbed, for the better part of a summer's day, in a quaint
shadow falling aslant upon the tapestry or upon the floor; to lose
myself, for an entire night, in watching the steady flame of a lamp,
or the embers of a fire; to dream away whole days over the perfume of a
flower; to repeat, monotonously, some common word, until the sound, by
dint of frequent repetition, ceased to convey any idea whatever to the
mind; to lose all sense of motion or physical existence, by means of
absolute bodily quiescence long and obstinately persevered in: such
were a few of the most common and least pernicious vagaries induced by a
condition of the mental faculties, not, indeed, altogether unparalleled,
but certainly bidding defiance to anything like analysis or explanation.
Yet let me not be misapprehended. The undue, earnest, and morbid
attention thus excited by objects in their own nature frivolous, must
not be confounded in character with that ruminating propensity common
to all mankind, and more especially indulged in by persons of ardent
imagination. It was not even, as might be at first supposed, an extreme
condition, or exaggeration of such propensity, but primarily and
essentially distinct and different. In the one instance, the dreamer,
or enthusiast, being interested by an object usually not frivolous,
imperceptibly loses sight of this object in a wilderness of deductions
and suggestions issuing therefrom, until, at the conclusion of a day
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