The Journal of a Disappointed Man

August 6. E---- and I were very modern in our courtship. Our candour was mutual and complete--parents and relatives would be shocked and staggered if they knew.... You see I am a biologist and we are both freethinkers. Voilà!... I hate all reticence and concealment.... There is a good deal of that ass, Gregers Werle, in my nature. August 7. My Gastrocnemius I become dreadfully emaciated. This morning, before getting off the bed I lifted my leg and gazed wistfully along all its length. My flabby gastrocnemius swung suspended from the tibia like a gondola from a Zeppelin. I touched it gently with the tip of my index finger and it oscillated. August 17. My beloved wife comes home this evening after a short, much needed holiday. August 27. My gratuity has turned out to be unexpectedly small. I hoped at least for one year's salary. And the horrible thing is I might live for several years longer! No one was ever more enthusiastic for death than I am at this moment. I hate this world with its war, and I bitterly regret I never managed to buy laudanum in time. There are only E---- and dear R---- and one or two others--the rest of the people I know I hate en bloc. If only I could get at them. I hate to have to leave them to themselves without getting my own back. August 31. My darling sweetheart, you ask me why I love you. I do not know. All I know is that I do love you, and beyond measure. Why do you love me--surely a more inscrutable problem. You do not know. No one ever knows. "The heart has its reasons which the reason knows not of." We love in obedience to a powerful gravitation of our beings, and then try to explain it by recapitulating one another's characters just as a man forms his opinions first and then thinks out reasons in support.