MS-BRML-NWWR-2-38

[0687] truth (to tell the truth!) I have never been particularly resolute,
I mean subject to taking resolutions, but rather inclined to plunge
headlong into the shit, without knowing who was shitting against
whom or on which side I had the better chance of skulking with
success.

[0688] But from this leaning^, too^, I derived scant satisfaction
and if I have never quite got rid of it it is not for want of
trying. [0689] The fact is, it seems, that the most you can hope is to be
a little less, in the end, the creature you were in the beginning,
and the middle.

[0690] For I had hardly perfected my plan, in my head,
when my bicycle ran over a dog, as subsequently appeared, and fell
to the ground, with an ineptness all the more inexcusable as the
dog, duly leashed, was not out on the road, but in on the pavement,
docile at its mistress's heels.

[0691] Precautions are like resolutions,
to be taken with precaution. [0692] The lady must have thought she had
left nothing to chance, so far as the safety of her dog was con-
cerned^, whereas in r^eality she was setting the whole of nature at
nought, no less outrageously than myself with my insane demands
for more light.

[0693] But instead of grovelling in my turn, invol^k-ⁱng
my great age and infirmities, I made things worse by making to
run away. [0694] I was soon overtaken, by a bloodthirsty mob of both sexes
and all ages, for I caught a glimpse of white beards and little^,
almost angel^[#]faces, and they were preparing to set about ^upon me when the
lady intervened. [0695] She said in effect, she told me so later on
and I believed her, Leave this poor old man alone.

[0696] He has killed
Teddy, I grant you that, Teddy whom I loved like my own child,
but it is not so serious as it seems, for as it happens I was
taking him to the vet, to have him put out of his pain. [0697] For
Teddy was old, blind, deaf, prostrated, with rheumatism and
perpetually incontinent, night and day, both indoors and out ^[|=|] of ^[|=|]
doors. [0698] Thanks then to this poor old man I have been spared