A GARDEN DIARY 243 
‘om-m-mject’ and ‘sum-m-mject,’ with a kind 
of solemn shake or quaver, as he rolled along.” 
The diarist need not necessarily roll along, and 
has no pretensions certainly to be called a sage, 
yet he too is apt now and again to murmur 
“‘sum-m-mject,” ‘“sum-m-mjective,” with a sound 
that even in his own ears rather resembles 
that of some bumble-bee upon a summer's 
morning; extremely self-important, that is to 
say, but not particularly lucid. It is true that 
so far as self-importance is concerned he stands 
absolutely excused, seeing that egotism is his 
profession. To cease to be egotistic is to cease 
to be a diarist altogether. This is as clear as 
it is satisfactory, but it can hardly be said to 
meet the point. There is nothing odd, of course, 
about a man or a woman being confidential with 
himself or herself; it is when they proceed to 
drop their confidences into other, and less in- 
dulgent ears, that the oddity begins. 
There are moreover seasons when such out- 
pourings seem even less appropriate than others, 
and this year—September to September—ap- 
pears, looking back, to be one of these. It 
has been a black, a despairingly black, twelve 
months for thousands; how black, how despair- 
ing, few of those thousands would have credited 
when it began. Amongst those incredulous ones, 
though on somewhat different grounds, the diarist 
might have been reckoned. Diary-keeping is 
