p.

8.

like my promotion, was being very slow. The last few
weeks however, probably as a result of my chasing, Tony has got
out of his Regular ways, & has been very good. Jim
on the other hand, has been getting on my nerves.
He is a bit Bass & Birmingham to begin with, &
also he is too kind & gentle & shy - to the point of
being gutless & easy going. So I had a talk with
him the other evening, about his coming duties &
responsibilities & he made many very unsatisfactory
statements & replies to my questions. He made some
frightfully trite & suspicious remarks, about not being
ambitious, & every man knowing his own limits, & it depends
how you are made - & "you cannot change your
nature", & so on. So I did a great deal of inward
groaning, & have thought very hard since. And today
I woke up, & reversed my decision, and I hope it
will not be too late. It is not very good to chop
& change one's opinions, in full view of the higher
command - but I think it is better than allowing
a mistake to go forwad. At least Tony has
guts - and he will probably come along well - under
my skilful guidance! I hope they will hurry
it a bit now.
You will notice above, that I have crossed out
banal, & substituted trite. Well - the other day
I bought H. W. Fowler's Modern English Usage.
Do you know it? It is a wonderful dictionary