The recitations were over for the day. It was the first week in November and it had rain about.

The recitations were over for the day.

It was the first week in November and it had rain about every day the

entire week. Now freezing temperature added to the discomfort of the

dismal season, the lingering and connoctual world, the last clinging yellow leaves from the trees on the campus,

and strew them over the deserted paths, while from the leaden sky fluttering snow-white flakes gave an unexpected touch of winter to the scene.

The east wind for which Boston and vicinity is celebrated drove the sleet against

the window panes of the room in which Rell Briggs set among his books and the apparatus for experiments.

The room served for both living and sleeping.

Briggs could have told you that the barrenness and desolateness of the apartment were like

his life, but he was a reticent man who knew how to suffer in silence.

The dreary wet afternoon, the cheerless walk over West Boston Bridge through the soaking streets had but served to emphasize the loneliness of his position, and morbid thoughts had haunted him all day.

To what use, all this persisted hard work for a place in the world,

clothes, food, a roof.

Is suicide wrong? He asked himself for tormenting persistency.

From out of the storm, voices and hands seem beckoning him all day to cut the Gordian knot and

solve the riddle of wince and wither for all time.

He then went to the tape deck and flipped over his copy of the Cure

disintegration to Side B.

No kidding.

This guy is Hamlet-level-bumbed out.

What was that, we just heard there, what was that from?

...