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349
The Journal of a Disappointed Man
·
W. N. P. Barbellion
117
Yesterday,
I
received
a
state
visit
from
the
Editor
of
the
Furniture
Record
seeking
advice
on
how
to
eradicate
mites
from
upholstering!
I
received
him
ironically--but
little
did
he
understand.
I
shot
up
like
a
ball
on
a
bagatelle
board
all
steamy
into
zoology
(my
once
beloved
science)
but
at
once
rolled
dead
into
the
very
low
hole
of
Economic
Entomology!
Curse....
Why
can't
I
either
have
a
first-rate
disease
or
be
a
first-rate
zoologist?
Now
just
think
what
a
much
better
figure
I
should
have
cut,
from
the
artistic
view
point,
had
I
remained
a
newspaper
reporter
who
had
taught
himself
prodigious
embryology
out
of
F.M.
Balfour's
Textbook,
who
had
cut
sections
of
fowls'
eggs
and
newt
embryos
with
a
hand
microtome,
who
had
passionately
dissected
out
the
hidden,
internal
anatomy
of
a
great
variety
of
animals,
who
could
recite
Wiedersheim's
Comparative
Anatomy
of
Vertebrates
and
patter
off
the
difference
between
a
nephridium
and
a
cœlomic
duct
without
turning
a
hair--or
the
phylogenetic
history
(how
absorbing!)
of
the
kidney--pronephros,
mesonephros
and
metanephros
and
all
the
ducts!...
All
this,
over
now
and
wasted.
My
hardly-won
knowledge
wrenched
away
is
never
brought
into
use--it
lies
piled
up
in
my
brain
rotting.
I
could
have
become
a
first-rate
comparative
anatomist.
December
3.
Cold
better.
So
back
at
work--gauging
ale
at
Dunfermline
as
R----
puts
it.
December
9.
In
the
evening
found
it
quite
impossible
to
stay
in
the
house
any
longer:
some
vague
fear
drove
me
out.
I
was
alarmed
to
be
alone
or
to
be
still.
It
is
my
cough,
I
think.
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