The Journal of a Disappointed Man

We put on our boots and socks (our feet seemed to have swollen to a very large size) and wandered downstream to a little white house, a gamekeeper's cottage, where the old woman gave us cream and milk and home-made bread in her beautiful old kitchen with open hearth. China dogs, of course, and on the wall an old painting representing the person of a page boy (so she said) who was once employed up at the squire's. An unwholesome atmosphere of pigs pervaded the garden, but as this is not pretty I ought to leave it out.... June 14. Brilliantly fine. Went by the early train to S----. Walked to the ivy bridge and then waded upstream to the great slab of rock where I spread myself in the sun as before. The experiment was so delightful it is worth repeating a hundred times. In this position I read of the decline and fall of Trilobites, of the Stratigraphy of the Lias and so on. Geology is a very crushing science, yet I enjoyed my existence this morning with the other flies about that stream. June 20. Sat at Liverpool University for the practical exam. Zoology, Board of Education. At the close the other students left but I went on working. Prof. Herdman asked me if I had finished. I said "No," so he gave me a little more time. Later he came up again, and again I said "No," but he replied that he was afraid I must stop. "What could you do further?" he asked, picking up a dish of plankton. I pointed out a Sagitta, an Oikopleura, and a Noctiluca, and he replied, "Of course I put in more than you were expected to identify in the time, so as to make a choice possible." Then he complimented me on my written papers which were sent in some weeks ago, and looking at my practical work he added, "And this, too, seems to be quite excellent."