have very much the feeling, when after a youth of gambolling in sunny
woods and furtive jolly raids upon the growing wheat and exciting
triumphant bolts before ineffectual casual dogs, it finds itself at
last for a long night of floundering effort and perplexity, in a
net--for the rest of its life.

He could not grasp what was wrong with him. He made enormous efforts
to diagnose his case. Was he really just a "lazy slacker" who ought to
"buck up"? He couldn't find it in him to believe it. He blamed his
father a good deal--it is what fathers are for--in putting him to a
trade he wasn't happy to follow, but he found it impossible to say
what he ought to have followed. He felt there had been something
stupid about his school, but just where that came in he couldn't say.
He made some perfectly sincere efforts to "buck up" and "shove"
ruthlessly. But that was infernal--impossible. He had to admit himself
miserable with all the misery of a social misfit, and with no clear
prospect of more than the most incidental happiness ahead of him. And
for all his attempts at self-reproach or self-discipline he felt at
bottom that he wasn't at fault.

As a matter of fact all the elements of his troubles had been
adequately diagnosed by a certain high-browed, spectacled gentleman
living at Highbury, wearing a gold _pince_-_nez_, and writing for the
most part in the beautiful library of the Reform Club. This gentleman
did not know Mr. Polly personally, but he had dealt with him generally
as "one of those ill-adjusted units that abound in a society that has
failed to develop a collective intelligence and a collective will for
order, commensurate with its complexities."

But phrases of that sort had no appeal for Mr. Polly.