ists--says I _must_.
Yet she knows that nothing fills me with a livelier horror than having
to answer letters. It paralyses me. I waste whole days sometimes
mourning over the time that I shall have to throw away presently,
answering some needless impertinence--requests for me to return books
lent to me; reminders from the London Library that my subscription is
overdue; proposals for me to renew my ticket at the stores--Euphemia's
business really; invitations for me to go and be abashed before
impertinent distinguished people: all kinds of bothering things.

And speaking of letters and invitations brings me round to friends. I
dislike most people; in London they get in one's way in the street and
fill up railway carriages, and in the country they stare at you--but I
_hate_ my friends. Yet Euphemia says I _must_ "keep up" my friends. They
would be all very well if they were really true friends and respected my
feelings and left me alone, just to sit quiet. But they come wearing
shiny clothes, and mop and mow at me and expect me to answer their
gibberings. Polite conversation always appears to me to be a wicked
perversion of the blessed gift of speech, which, I take it, was given us
to season our lives rather than to make them insipid. New friends are
the worst in this respect. With old friends one is more at home; you
give them something to eat or drink, or look at, or something--whatever
they seem to want--and just turn round and go on smoking quietly. But
every now and then Euphemia or Destiny inflicts a new human being upon
me. I do not mean a baby, though the sentence has got that turn
somehow, but an introduction; and the wretched thing, all angles and
offence, keeps bobbing about me and discovering new ways of worrying me,
trying, I believe, to find out what topics interest me, though the fact
is no topics interest me. Once or twice, of course, I have met human
beings I think I could have got on with very well, after a time; but in
this mood, at least, I doubt if any human being is quite worth the
bother of a new acquaintance.

These are just sample bothers--shaving, washing, answering letters,
talking to people. I could specify hundreds more. Indeed, in my sadder
moments, it seems to me life is all compact of bothers. There are the
details of business--knowing the date approximately (an incessant
anxiety) and the time of day. Then, having to buy things. Euphemia does
most of this, it is true, but she draws the lin