The question for me to consider is, whether this development is to be
accomplished by my being guilty of an act of egregious folly.

Dans la cinquantaine! The reflection should produce a gravity in men.
Such a number of years will not ring like bridal bells in a man's ears.
I have my books about me, my horses, my dogs, a contented household.
I move in the centre of a perfect machine, and I am dissatisfied. I rise
early. I do not digest badly. What is wrong?

The calamity of my case is that I am in danger of betraying what is wrong
with me to others, without knowing it myself. Some woman will be
suspecting and tattling, because she has nothing else to do. Girls have
wonderfully shrewd eyes for a weakness in the sex which they are
instructed to look upon as superior. But I am on my guard.

The fact is manifest: I feel I have been living more or less uselessly.
It is a fat time. There are a certain set of men in every prosperous
country who, having wherewithal, and not being compelled to toil, become
subjected to the moral ideal. Most of them in the end sit down with our
sixth Henry or second Richard and philosophise on shepherds. To be no
better than a simple hind! Am I better? Prime bacon and an occasional
draft of shrewd beer content him, and they do not me. Yet I am sound,
and can sit through the night and be ready, and on the morrow I shall
stand for the county.

I made the announcement that I had thoughts of entering Parliament,
before I had half formed the determination, at my sister's lawn party
yesterday.