The Journal of a Disappointed Man

The Stockbroker Another neighbour who interests me is mainly notable for his extraordinary gait. He is a man with a large, round head, a large round, dissolute looking face and fairly broad shoulders, below which everything tapers away to a pair of tiny feet neatly booted. These two little feet are excessively sensitive to road surface--one would say he had special sense organs on his toes, to judge by the manner in which he picks out his path along the country road in short, quick, fussy steps: his feet seem to dissect out the road as if boning a herring. A big bunion is as good as a sense organ, but his feet are too small and elegant. September 24. The second nurse arrived to-day. Great air raid last night of which we heard nothing, thank God! My nerves are giving way under the strain.... One leg (the left) drags abominably.... We shall want a bath-chair as well as a perambulator. Crawled up thro' the path-fields to the uplands and sat in a field in the sun with my back against a haystack. I was so immobile in my dejection that Flies and Grass-hoppers came and perched about me. This made me furious. "I am not dead yet," I said, "get away," and I would suddenly drive them off.... In horrible dejection.... Even my mental powers are disintegrating--that's the rub. Some quite recent incidents I cannot remember even when reminded of them: they seem to have passed clean out of my mind--a remarkable sensation this.