Unthrifty Lessing, to
have been so nice about your fingers, (and so near the mint, too,) when
your general was wise enough to make his fortune! As if ink-stains were
the only ones that would wash out, and no others had ever been covered
with white kid from the sight of all reasonable men! In July, 1764, he
had a violent fever, which he turned to account in his usual cheerful
way: "The serious epoch of my life is drawing nigh. I am beginning to
become a man, and flatter myself that in this burning fever I have raved
away the last remains of my youthful follies. Fortunate illness!" He had
never intended to bind himself to an official career. To his father he
writes: "I have more than once declared that my present engagement could
not continue long, that I have not given up my old plan of living, and
that I am more than ever resolved to withdraw from any service that is
not wholly to my mind. I have passed the middle of my life, and can think
of nothing that could compel me to make myself a slave for the poor
remainder of it. I write you this, dearest father, and must write you
this, in order that you may not be astonished if, before long, you should
see me once more very far removed from all hopes of, or claims to, a
settled prosperity, as it is called.
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