16 December 1912 – 22 December 1912

Here I am once more. A passable night. After breakfast the intermittency recommenced--it is better now, with a dropped beat only about once per half-hour, so that I am almost happy after yesterday, which was Hell. The world is too good to give up without remonstrance at the beck of a weak heart. Before I went to sleep last night, my watch stopped--I at once observed the cessation of its tick and wondered if it were an omen. I was genuinely surprised to find myself still ticking when I awoke this morning. A moment ago a hearse passed down the street.... Yes, but I'm damned if I haven't a right to be morbid after yesterday. To be ill like this in a boarding-house! I'd marry to-morrow if I had the chance.

Sollas's "Ancient Hunters" Read Sollas's book Ancient Hunters--very thrilling--mind full of the Aurignacians, Mousterians, Magdalenians! I have been peering down such tremendous vistas of time and change that my own troubles have been eclipsed into ridiculous insignificance. It has been really a Pillar of Strength to me--a splendid tonic. Palæontology has its comfortable words too. I have revelled in my littleness and irresponsibility. It has relieved me of the harassing desire to live, I feel content to live dangerously, indifferent to my fate; I have discovered I am a fly, that we are all flies, that nothing matters. It's a great load off my life, for I don't mind being such a micro-organism--to me the honour is sufficient of belonging to the universe--such a great universe, so grand a scheme of things. Not even Death can rob me of that honour. For nothing can alter the fact that I have lived; I have been I, if for ever so short a time. And when I am dead, the matter which composes my body is indestructible--and eternal, so that come what may to my "Soul," my dust will always be going on, each separate atom of me playing its separate part--I shall still have some sort of a finger in the Pie. When I am dead, you can boil me, burn me, drown me, scatter me--but you cannot destroy me: my little atoms would merely deride such heavy vengeance. Death can do no more than kill you.