“The play is done; the curtain drops,
Slow falling to the prompter's bell
A moment yet the actor stops
And looks around to say farewell.
It is an irksome word and task:
And when he's laughed and said his say,
He shows, as he removes the mask,
A face that's anything but gay.”
- William Makepeace Thackeray
Who knows what true loneliness is -- not the conventional word, but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion. Now and then a fatal conjunction of events may lift the veil for an instant. For an instant only. No human being could bear a steady view of moral solitude without going mad.
Mask yourself and hide from the real world, and use it to veil your feelings. Use it to show the world what it wants to see; happiness, laughter, whatever it desires. Be true to yourself, masked to the world.
Your ever loyal servant,
Phantom
