The Journal of a Disappointed Man

"Rather decorative,"---- remarked in an audible voice, turning her head on one side and quizzing. I can well believe it was. She looked wholly admirable. November 21. My Nightmare Can't get rid of my cough. I have so many things to do--I am living in a fever of haste to get them done. Yet this cough hinders me. There is always something which drags me back from the achievement of my desires. It's like a nightmare; I see myself struggling violently to escape from a monster which draws continuously nearer, until his shadow falls across my path, when I begin to run and find my legs tied, etc. The only difference is that mine is a nightmare from which I never wake up. The haven of successful accomplishment remains as far off as ever. Oh! make haste. November 29. The English Review has returned my Essay!--This is a keen disappointment to me. "I wish I could use this, but I am really too full," the Editor writes. To be faintly encouraged and delicately rejected--why I prefer the printed form. December 1. More Irony Renewed my cold--I do nothing all day but blow my nose, cough, and curse Austin Harrison. M---- thinks the lungs are all right. "There is nothing there, I think," said he, this morning. Alleluia! I've had visions of consumption for weeks past and M---- himself has been expecting it. I always just escape: I always almost get something, do something, go somewhere, I have dabbled in a variety of diseases, but never got one downright[2]--but only enough to make me feel horribly unfit and very miserable without the consolation of being able to regard myself as the heroic victim of some incurable disorder. Instead of being Stevenson with tuberculosis, I've only been Jones with dyspepsia. So, too, in other directions, big events have always just missed me: by Herculean efforts I succeeded in giving up newspaper journalism and breaking thro' that steel environment--but only to become an Entomologist! I once achieved success in an Essay in the Academy, which attracted attention--a debut, however, that never developed. I had not quite arrived. It is always not quite.