"Have you none?"
"Not much," he answered, and I believe it.
"Smug wretch, then. All I can say is, I may have instincts and passions but I am not a pale water-colour artist.... What's the matter with you," I foamed, "is that you like pictures. If I showed you a real woman, you would exclaim contemplatively, 'How lovely;' then putting out one hand to touch her, unsuspectingly, you'd scream aghast, 'Oh! it's alive, I hear it ticking.' 'Yes, my boy,' I answer severely with a flourish, 'That is a woman's heart.'"
R—— exploded with laughter and then said, "A truce to your desire for more life, for actual men and women. ... I know this that last night I would not have exchanged the quiet armchair reading the last chapter of Dostoieffsky's The Possessed for a Balaclava Charge."
"A matter of temperament, I suppose," I reflected, in cold detachment. "You see, I belong to the raw meat school. You prefer life cooked for you in a book. You prefer the confectioner's shop to cutting down the wheat with your own scythe."
July 26.
The B.M. is a ghastly hole. They will give me none of the apparatus I require. If you ask the Trustees for a thousand pounds for the propagation of the Gospel in foreign parts they say, "Yes." If you ask for twenty pounds for a new microscope they say, "No, but we'll cut off your nose with a big pair of scissors."
July 27.
To a pedantic prosy little old maid who was working in my room this morning, I exclaimed,—
"I'd sooner make a good dissection than go to a Lord Mayor's Banquet. Turtle Soup ain't in it."