took them up, bade the fat old woman good-morning, with the utmost
politeness, and sped, full tilt, up Castle Hill to the park.

I found a bench to myself, and began to bite greedily into my
provender. It did me good; it was a long time since I had had such a
square meal, and, by degrees, I felt the same sated quiet steal over me
that one feels after a good long cry. My courage rose mightily. I could
no longer be satisfied with writing an article about anything so simple
and straight-ahead as the "Crimes of Futurity," that any ass might
arrive at, ay, simply deduct from history. I felt capable of a much
greater effort than that; I was in a fitting mood to overcome
difficulties, and I decided on a treatise, in three sections, on
"Philosophical Cognition." This would, naturally, give me an
opportunity of crushing pitiably some of Kant's sophistries ... but, on
taking out my writing materials to commence work, I discovered that I
no longer owned a pencil: I had forgotten it in the pawn-office. My
pencil was lying in my waistcoat pocket.

Good Lord! how everything seems to take a delight in thwarting me
today! I swore a few times, rose from the seat, and took a couple of
turns up and down the path. It was very quiet all around me; down near
the Queen's arbour two nursemaids were trundling their perambulators;
otherwise, there was not a creature anywhere in sight. I was in a
thoroughly embittered temper; I paced up and down before my seat like a
maniac. How strangely awry things seemed to go! To think that an
article in three sections should be downright stranded by the simple
fact of my not having a pennyworth of pencil in my pocket. Supposing I
were to return to Pyle Street and ask to get my pencil back? There
would be still time to get a good piece finished before the promenading
public commenced to fill the parks. So much, too, depended on this
treatise on "Philosophical Cognition"--mayhap many human beings'
welfare, no one could say; and I told myself it might be of the
greatest possible help to many young people. On second thoughts, I
would not lay violent hands on Kant; I might easily avoid doing that; I
would only need to make an almost imperceptible gliding over when I
came to query Time and Space; but I would not answer for Renan, old
Parson Renan....

At all events, an article of so-and-so many columns has to be
completed. For the unpaid rent, and the landlady's inquiring look in
the morning when I met her on