August 13 + 

I hate elderly women who mention their legs. It makes me shudder. + 

I had two amusing conversations this morning, one with a jealous old man of 70 summers who, in spite of his age, is jealous⁠—I can find no other term⁠—of me in spite of mine, and the other with a social climber. I always tell the first of any of my little successes and regularly hand him all my memoirs as they appear, to which he as regularly protests that he reads very little now. + 

“Oh! never mind,” I always answer gaily, “you take it and read it going down in the train⁠—it will amuse you.” He submits but is always silent next time I see him⁠—a little, admonitory silence. Or, I mention I am giving an address at ⸻, and he says “Oom,” and at once begins his reminiscences, which I have heard many times before, and am sometimes tempted to correct him when, his memory failing, he leaves out an essential portion of his story. Thus do crabbed age and boastful youth tantalise one another. + 

To the social climber I said slyly: + 

“You seem to move in a very distinguished entourage during your weekends.” + 

He smiled a little self-consciously, hesitated a moment and then said: + 

“Oh! I have a few nice friends, you know.” + 

Now I am sorry, but though I scrutinised this lick-spittle and arch belly-truck rider very closely, I am quite unable to say whether that smile and unwonted diffidence meant simple pleasure at the now certain knowledge that I was duly impressed, or whether it was genuine confusion at the thought that he had perhaps been overdoing it. + 

Curiously enough, all bores of whatever kind make a dead set at me. I am always a ready listener and my thrusts are always gentle. Hence the pyramids! I constantly act as phlebotomist to the vanity of the young and to the anecdotage of the senile and senescent. + 