Billing had apparently hit Brown previously, and had sent him to the Headmaster for being rude, and he, instead of backing Billing up, had asked Brown why he had not hit him back: so when Billing hit Rockfeller to-day, Rockfeller being with Brown, Brown was rude to Billing, who attacked Brown, who laid Billing out. Meanwhile Brown has gone to his House master to ask that Billing’s shop may be put out of bounds, and Billing presumably is going to the Headmaster. There will be a fine flare-up. 6 October. Rejoice, O land! My director on seeing my first essay, and a bad one at that, tells me I ought to do well with my writing. What fun it would be if I could write! I see myself as the English Anatole France, a vista of glory ... superb! I have fallen hopelessly in love with the ties in Bartlett’s window. I shall have to buy them all, even though they are quite outrageous: the most cunning, subtle and violent checks imaginable. Sunday, 8 October. This morning we had a howling dervish of a missioner who comes once a year. All his ghastly stories were there and his awful metaphors and his incredible requests. In this morning’s sermon he asked us to give his mission a vision; last time it was that we should pray for it, and before that, that we should give up our holidays to work there. To-day we were told that even cabbages had visions, and God knows what else. He was upset by our laughing at him and he broke down several times, Chris crowning himself with glory by going out in the middle of the man’s discourse clasping a pink handkerchief to his nose which he said was bleeding. Really the pulpit is no place for self-revelation, but I am afraid the man has not learnt it yet. 9 October. Two youths have been insolent to me in the Music Schools. Am I considered the school idiot? If so I am not surprised; any way I was most polite to them--next time measures will be taken. The best way with these people is to ask them their names; it generally shuts them up. I believe my appearance is too weak; I shall have to grow mustachios. I am always the person the lost Asiatic asks his way from, and French come to me as fly to fly-paper, ditto the hysterical matron. Such is fame. 12 October. Guy Denver tells me the following: It is extremely cold, and he and Conway are walking together. Says Conway, “God, I am cold!” Guy: “Then why don’t you wear an overcoat?” “Oh! then I should be classed with the John Haye and Ben Gore lot.” That is what the fear of popular opinion drives the ordinary Public Schoolboy to; that sort of thing is constantly recurring like the plague. 15 October. This afternoon a delicious six-mile walk with B. G. The weather was perfect, a warm sun and everything misty, with “the distances very distant,” as Kipling puts it. Though we did not rock the world with our utterances, it was very enjoyable indeed. 20 October.