Old false trails:
The Philosopher's Stone (Balthazar Clæs).[2]
A universal catholicon (Bishop Berkeley's tar-water). Mystical numbers (as per above).
My father was Sir Thomas Browne and my mother Marie Bashkirtseff. See what a curious hybrid I am!
I toss these pages in the faces of timid, furtive, respectable people and say: "There! that's me! You may like it or lump it, but it's true. And I challenge you to follow suit, to flash the searchlight of your self-consciousness into every remotest corner of your life and invite everybody's inspection. Be candid, be honest, break down the partitions of your cubicle, come out of your burrow, little worm." As we are all such worms we should at least be honest worms.
My gratitude to E—— for plucking me out of the hideous miseries of my life in London is greater than I can express. If I were the cheap hero of a ladies' novel I should immolate my journals as a token, and you would have a pretty picture of a pale young man watching his days go up in smoke by the drawing-room fire. But I have more confidence in her sterling good sense, and if I cannot be loved for what I am, I do not wish to be loved for what I am not.