The Journal of a Disappointed Man

On nearing the village, L---- arrived, riding A----'s animal and holding his sides for laughing at me as I crawled along holding the carthorse by the bridle. Got on again and rode into the Rectory grounds in fine style like a dashing cavalier, every one jeering at me from the lawn. September 28. Having lived on this planet now for the space of 24 years, I can claim with some cogency that I am qualified to express some sort of opinion about it. I therefore hereby record that I find myself in an absorbingly interesting place where I live, move and have my being, dominated by one monstrous feature above all others--the mystery of it all! Everything is so astonishing, my own existence so incredible! Nothing explains itself. Every one is dumb. It is like walking about at a masqued Ball.... Even I myself am a mystery to me. How wonderful and frightening that is--to feel yourself--your innermost and most substantial possession to be a mystery, incomprehensible. I look at myself in the mirror and mock at myself. On some days I am to myself as strange and unfamiliar as a Pterodactyl. There is a certain grim humour in finding myself here possessed of a perfectly arbitrary arrangement of lineaments when I never asked to be here and never selected my own attributes. To the dignity of a human being it seems like a coarse practical joke.... My own freakish physique is certainly a joke. October 4. In London Again