Reader, if you wrest my words beyond their fair construction, it is you, and not I, that are the April Fool. - Charles Lamb

Sun, and sky, and breeze, and solitary walks, and summer holidays, and the greenness of fields, and the delicious juices of meats and fishes, and society, and the cheerful glass, and candle-light, and fire-side conversations, and innocent vanities, and irony itself — do these things go out with life? Can a ghost laugh, or shake his gaunt sides, when you are pleasant with him?

If peradventure, Reader, it has been thy lot to waste the golden years of thy life—thy shining youth—in the irksome confinement of an office; to have thy prison days prolonged through middle age down to decrepitude and silver hairs, without hope of release or respite; to have lived to forget that there are such things as holidays, or to remember them but as the prerogatives of childhood; then, and then only, will you be able to appreciate my deliverance.

I love to lose myself in other men's minds.