Page:Diary of a Pilgrimage (1891).pdf/108

 To add to my misfortunes, I am the miserable possessor of a demon time-table that I cannot get rid of, a Bradshaw for August, 1887. Regularly, on the first of each month, I buy and bring home with me a new Bradshaw and a new A.B.C. What becomes of them after the second of the month, I do not know. After the second of the month, I never see either of them again. What their fate is, I can only guess. In their place is left, to mislead me, this wretched old 1887 corpse.

For three years I have been trying to escape from it, but it will not leave me. I have thrown it out of the window, and it has fallen on people's heads, and those people have picked it up and smoothed it out, and brought it back to the house, and members of my family—"friends" they call themselves—-people of my own flesh and blood—have thanked them and taken it in again!

I have kicked it into a dozen pieces, and kicked the pieces all the way downstairs and out into the garden, and persons—persons, mind you, who will not sew a button on the back of my shirt to save me from madness—have collected the pieces and stitched them carefully together, and made the book look as good as new, and put it back in my study!

It has acquired the secret of perpetual youth, has this time-table. Other time-tables that I buy become dissi-