eful to me at the present
moment. But I am as a diarist hopelessly imperfect. I stare, now, as I
write, at the bald, uninspiring page. This is my entry for Aug. 4th,
19--.

"Weighed Susan. 4 st. 3.

"Met Jaffery at station.

"Albanian widow turned up unexpectedly after lunch. Fine woman. Going to
be a handful. Staying week-end. Story of meeting and Prescott marriage.

"Promised Susan a donkey ride. Where the deuce does one get donkeys
warranted quiet and guaranteed to carry a lady? _Mem:_ Ask Torn
Fletcher.

"_Mem:_ Write to Launebeck about cigars."

Why I didn't write straight off to Launebeck about the cigars, instead
of "mem-ing" it, may seem a mystery. It isn't. It is a comfortable habit
of mine. Once having "mem-ed" an unpleasant thing in my diary, the
matter is over. I dismiss it from my mind. But to return to Liosha--I
find in my entry of sixty-two words thirty-five devoted to Susan, her
donkey and the cigars, and only twenty-seven to the really astonishing
events of the day. Of course I am angry. Of course I consult Barbara. Of
course she pats the little bald patch on the top of my head and laughs
in a superior way and invents, with a paralysing air of verity, an
impossible amplification of the "story of meeting and Prescott
marriage." And of course, the frivolous Jaffery, now that one really
wants him, is sitting astride of a cannon, and smoking a pipe and,
notebook and pencil in hand, is writing a picturesque description of the
bungling decapitation by shrapnel of the general who has just been
unfolding to him the whole plan of the campaign, and consequently is
provokingly un-getatable by serious persons like myself[A].

[Footnote A: Hilary is writing at the end of the late Balkan
war.--W.J.L.]

So for what I learned that day I must trust to the elusive witch,
Memory. I have never been to Albania. I have never wanted to go to
Albania. Even now, I haven't the remotest desire to go to Albania. I
should loathe it. Wherever I go nowadays, I claim as my right bedroom
and bath and viands succulent to the palate and tender to the teeth. My
demands are modest. But could I get them in Albania? No. Could one
travel from Scutari to Monastir in the same comfort as one travels from
London to Paris or from New York to Chicago? No. Does any sensible man
of domestic instincts and scholarly tastes like to find himself halfway
up an inaccessible mountain, surrounded by a band of moustachioed
desperadoes in fustanella