The Journal of a Disappointed Man

While boating on ---- last summer, we saw two persons, a man and a girl sitting together on the beach reading a book with heads almost touching. "I wonder what they're reading?" I said, and I was dying to know. We made a few facetious guesses. "Shall I ask?" "Yes, do," said Mrs. ----. The truth is we all wanted to know. We were suddenly mad with curiosity as we watched the happy pair turning over leaf after leaf. While R---- leaned on his oars, I stood up in the boat and threatened to shout out a polite enquiry--just to prove that the will is free. But seeing my intention the boat-load grew nervous and said seriously, "No," which unnerved me at the last moment so I sat down again. Why was I so afraid of being thought a lunatic by two persons in the distance whom I had never seen and probably would never see again? Besides I was a lunatic--we all were. In our post-prandial perambulations about S. Kensington G---- and I often pass the window of a photographer's shop containing always a profusion of bare arms, chests, necks, bosoms belonging to actresses, aristocrats and harlots--some very beautiful indeed. Yet on the whole the window annoys us, especially one picture of a young thing with an arum lily (ghastly plant!) laid exquisitely across her breast. "Why do we suffer this?" I asked G----, tapping the window ledge as we stood. "I don't know," he answered lamely--morose. (Pause while the two embittered young men continue to look in and the beautiful young women continue to look out.)