Page:Small Souls (1919).djvu/136

128, in a train, or in a tram-car, or at a theatre, all those stupid, ugly faces, those crooked bodies, either too fat or too thin, one with a blink—like this—another with a squint—like that—this one with little hairs in his ears and that one with hands that make you sick. I don’t know if you understand me; but all of this, with politics and the social question and those swarms of fat stomachs like our friend’s just now: all of this is what I call human wretchedness. . . . I may write a book about it some day; but perhaps my book itself would be merely human wretchedness. . . .”

In the meantime, he had been following his sister into three shops, one after the other, and she had managed to make her purchases in between his philosophizings. Whenever he saw his chance, he went on speaking, walking aslant beside her and talking into her ear, constantly having to move off the narrow pavements of the Hoogstraat and Veenestraat, losing her for a moment, because they were separated by a couple of carriages going at a foot-pace, but soon catching her up again. And he never lost the thread of his thoughts:

“I see that you have never reflected much, just like most women. What I say is quite new to you. You have not even observed much. You should observe, you should note all the queer things and people about you. Not that you and I ourselves are not queer and behave queerly. We can’t help it. We too stumble along in our human wretchedness. But in your boy—it was quite attractive—I saw