Faber A thing which surprises me very much in looking over those days of suffering, is, that during that day a frightful irritability is the emotion that I most rememberan irritability of feeling, not of expression: for I lay quite still upon the bed all day, and only answered, briefly and simply, the questions of Sophie and the maid.

No one understood that this irritability was the distress and toil of a man who, at the bottom of the social scale, is struggling to reach the surface.

He may even be able to extend this recognition to his own impulses, and to overcome the conviction that his irritability during afternoon school in July is the result of an intellectual conclusion as to the need of special severity in dealing with a set of unprecedentedly wicked boys.