The Journal of a Disappointed Man

June 28. Saw my brother A---- off at Waterloo en route for Armageddon. Darling fellow. He shook hands with P---- and H----, and P---- wished him "Goodbye, and good luck." Then he held my hand a moment, said "Goodbye, old man," and for a second gave me a queer little nervous look. I could only say "Goodbye," but we understand each other perfectly.... It is horrible. I love him tenderly. June 29. Sleep Sleep means unconsciousness: unconsciousness is a solemn state--you get it for example from a blow on the head with a mallet. It always weightily impresses me to see someone asleep--especially someone I love as to-day, stretched out as still as a log--who perhaps a few minutes ago was alive, even animated. And there is nothing so welcome, unless it be the sunrise, as the first faint gleam of recognition in the half-opened eye when consciousness like a mighty river begins to flow in and restore our love to us again. When I go to bed myself, I sometimes jealously guard my faculties from being filched away by sleep. I almost fear sleep: it makes me apprehensive--this wonderful and unknowable Thing which is going to happen to me for which I must lay myself out on a bed and wait, with an elaborate preparedness. Unlike Sir Thomas Browne, I am not always so content to take my leave of the sun and sleep, if need be, into the resurrection. And I sometimes lie awake and wonder when the mysterious Visitor will come to me and call me away from this thrilling world, and how He does it, to which end I try to remain conscious of the gradual process and to understand it: an impossibility of course involving a contradiction in terms. So I shall never know, nor will anybody else.