April 10.
'Why, asks Samuel Butler, 'should not chicken be born and clergymen be laid and hatched? Or why, at any rate, should not the clergyman be born full grown and in Holy Orders not to say already beneficed ? The present arrangement is not convenient ... it is not only not perfect but so much the reverse that we could hardly find words to express our sense of its awkwardness if we could look upon it with new eyes. ..."
As soon as we are born, if we could but get up, bath, dress, shave, breakfast once for all, if we could 'cut' these monotonous cycles of routine. If once the sun rose it would stay up, or once we were alive we were immortal! — how much forrarder we should all get — always at the heart of things, working without let or hindrance in a straight line for the millennium! Now we waltz along instead. Even planets die off and new ones come in their place. How infinitely wearisome it seems. When an old man dies what a waste, and when a baby is born what a redundancy of labour in front!
Two People I hate in particular
The man walking along the pavement in front of me giving me no room to pass under the satisfactory impression that he is the only being on the pavement or in the street, city, country, world, universe: and it all belongs to him even the moon and sun and stars.
The woman on the bus the other night — pouring out an interminable flow of poisonous chatter into the ear of her man — poor, exhausted devil who kept answering dreamily 'Oom' and 'Yes' and 'Oom' — how I hated her for his sake !
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