The Journal of a Disappointed Man

May 5. At R----. Mugged about all day. Put on a gramophone record--then crawled up into a corner of the large, empty drawing room and ate my heart out. Heart has a bitter taste--if it's your own. May 6. Sat in the "morning room" feeling ill. In the chair opposite sat Aunt Fanny, aged 86, knitting. I listened to the click of her needles, while out in the garden a thrush sang, and there was a red sunset. May 8. Before I left R----, A---- [My brother] had written to Uncle enclosing my doctor's letter. I don't know the details except that Dr. M---- emphasised the seriousness and yet held out hope that two months' rest would allay the symptoms. May 11. At Home I made some offensive remark to H---- whom I met in the street. This set him off. "You blighter, I hope you marry a loose woman. May your children be all bandy-legged and squint-eyed, may your teeth drop out, and your toes have bunions," and so on in his usual lengthy commination. I turned to the third man. "Bob--this!--after all I've done for that young man! I have even gone out of my Way to cultivate in him a taste for poetry--until he is now, in fact, quite wrapped up in it--indeed, so much so, that for a time he was nothing but a brown paper parcel labelled Poetry." H. (doggedly): "When are you going to die?" "That Master H----," I answered menacingly, "is on the knees of the Gods."