I gave up the idea
of competing for any distinction at the University, comforting
myself with the thought that I could not fail in the examination
for the ordinary degree. The day before the examination began I
fell ill; and when at last I recovered, after a narrow escape from
death, I turned my back upon Oxford, and went down alone to visit
the old place where I had been born, feeble in health and
profoundly disgusted and discouraged. I was twenty-one years of
age, master of myself and of my fortune; but so deeply had the long
chain of small unlucky circumstances affected me that I thought
seriously of shutting myself up from the world to live the life of
a hermit and to die as soon as possible. Death seemed the only
cheerful possibility in my existence, and my thoughts soon dwelt
upon it altogether.
I had never shown any wish to return to my own home since I had
been taken away as a little boy, and no one had ever pressed me to
do so. The place had been kept in order after a fashion, and did
not seem to have suffered during the fifteen years or more of my
absence. Nothing earthly could affect those old gray walls that
had fought the elements for so many centuries.
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