Off Southend. Friendly sole advises me not to venture further. "Tempt not the Barking Outfall," he says, and adds that the "water at London will poison me, and I shall be made into boots." London! Always wanted to see it. What's the good of being called "a kind of gregarious whale" by the dictionaries if I avoid society?
Got past Barking safely! Who is it—Browning I think—wrote a poem about "Sludge, the Medium." Must have written it near Barking. Arrived off Wanstead Flats. See a respectable man on banks being chivied by a mob. Told (by a sprat) that "it's Mr. Hills, of the Thames Ironworks, who's been helping the unemployed." Now the unemployed seem helping him! Tower Bridge rather fine.
Westminster. Big building. Curious scent in air. Told it's the Houses of Parliament, and scent is eucalyptus, "because of the influenza." Curious word—wonder what it means.
Up at Putney. See University Boat-Race, if I can stay long enough. Feel sleepy. Must be the amount of bad water I've drunk. Knock up against an ice-floe. Two men in boat try to shoot me. They seem unemployed. Do they want to make me into soup for the poor? Not if I know it. Trundle back seawards. Meet a sea-gull. Says somebody tried to hook him from embankment. Says he "doesn't like London." Rather inclined to agree with him.
Back at sea. Know now what influenza means—because I've caught it! Awful pains in my hide! Must consult a leech.
THE INTROSPECTIVE BARD.
Persistent self-analysis,
Perfected more and more,