The Henson Journals

[182]

Thursday in Holy Week, March 28th, 1929.

I would not enter on my list of friends

(Though graced with polish'd manners & fine sense,

Yet wanting sensibility) the man

Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm.

An inadvertent step may crush the snail

That crawls at evening in the public path:

But he that has humanity, forewarn'd,

Will tread aside, & let the reptile live.

Cowper excepts "the creeping vermin" that disturbs our domestic comfort. "A necessary act incurs no blame." But if the insects nowise incommode us, they have a right to live.

The sums is this. If man's convenience, health,

Or safety interfere, his rights and claims

Are paramount, & must extinguish theirs.

Else they are all – the meanest things that are

As free to live, & to enjoy that life,

As God was free to form them at the first,

Who in his sovereign wisdom made them all.

How far could the advocate of "blood sports", who are plainly hard pressed for a moral excuse for their pleasure, build a case for hunting & coursing on the healthful exercise which it provides?

[183]

I changed a cheque at the Bank: and then corrected the lecture on a 17th century Rector of Purleigh, named Washington, which Macdonald sent to me. It is to be published in U.S.A., and is quite accurate enough for that country. Then I resumed the dreary & dirty job of clearing up my room. Much was destroyed: much hustled away into available recesses, there to lie unheeded until some general upheaval sends them also to destruction!

During the afternoon Lionel and I walked round the Park together. The brilliance of the day, and the warmth, more suggestive of summer than of spring, made the open–air delightful. Lambs are beginning to appear in the fields, and the trees are receiving a waxing appearance of verdure. Who would exchange the country for the city, who has once known both?

The Evening Paper, commenting on some observations that I made about quill pens and their relation to handwriting, observes that "like few clerics – and, incidentally fewer doctors – his own handwriting consists of extremely well made & carefully formed outlines". This is one of the very few compliments which I can endure to receive.

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