The wind rose and tapped the line against the flag-staff at the Coastguard Station. It roared through my hair and past my ears for an hour on end till I felt quite windswept and bleak. On the way home we saw the wind darting hither and thither over the long grass like a lunatic snake. The wind! Oh! the wind—I have an enormous faith in the curative properties of the wind. I feel better already.
October 17.
Staying in Surrey. Exam. over and I feel fairly confident—after an agony for a few days before on account of the development of a cold which threatened to snatch the last chance out of my hands.
Justifiable Mendacity
Sitting on a gate on the N. Downs I saw a long way below me in the valley a man standing in a chalk pit and wielding a stick vigorously. For some reason or another the idea came to me that it would be interesting if he were in the act of killing a Snake—he so far away below and I above and unnoticed quietly watching him. At dinner to-night, this revised version of the story came out quite pat and natural and obviously interested the assembly. I added graphically that the man was too far away from me to be able to say what species of Snake it was he was killing. I possess the qualifications of an artistic liar. Yet I can't regard such a story as a lie—it was rather a justifiable emendation of an otherwise uninteresting incident.
October 24.
Une Caractère
... She is a tiny little old lady, very frail and very delicate, with a tiny voice like the noise of a fretsaw. She talks incessantly about things which do not interest you, until your face gets stiff with forcing a polite smile, and your voice cracked and your throat dry with saying, "Yes," and "Really."
To-night I attend the Zoological Society to read my first paper, so I am really in a fluster and want to be quiet. Therefore to prevent her from talking I write two letters which I represent as urgent. At 6.15 desperate, so went out for a walk in the dark London streets. Returned to supper and to Her. After the wife, the husband is intellectual pyrotechnics. Referring to the Museum,—
"Would you have there, I suppose, any insects, in a case like, what you might say to study to yourself when no one is by?" he inquired.