Humphreys was 25 years old when he wrote those...letters? I don't know. Maybe a diary. Wouldn't you think if you as a mother--Happy Mother's Day, by the way--father, sister, brother--loved one--got those letters, you'd fucking DO SOMETHING?! Those are not the sentiments of a normal person, not in 2015, not in 1835. HHH included them in his bio because they stuck out to him when he wrote the book in...1906 or so. Curious thing, I have not been able to find HHH's dates. The Wikipedia entry for him that is on AAH's page links to this:

Henry Humphreys was a Hong Kong businessman and member of the Sanitary Board.

Henry Humpphreys moved to Hong Kong in 1889 to enter into business. He was the manager of the J. D. Humphreys & Son set up by J. D. Humphreys who set his office at the Alexandra Building. The J. D. Humphreys & Son was the general managers of the Peak Tramways & Co., A. S. Watson & Co. where he was the Chairman, and the Humphreys Estate and Finance Company where Henry Humphreys was the liquidator of the Humphreys Estate and Finance Company, Limited..^[1] He lived on the Peak Road.^[2]

Henry Humphreys ran for one of the vacant seat on the Sanitary Board in the 1906 election. He was appointed by Governor Matthew Nathan to the Public Health and Regulations Ordinance Commission in 1906 to inquiry into the alleged corruption and bribery in the Sanitary Department,^[3] which led to the amendment of the Public Health and Building Ordinance to reform the Sanitary Board in 1908.

He left Hong Kong for home in 1933.^[4]

That is all there is and I don't think that is Henry Hollingsworth Humphreys. He would have been about 87 years old when "he left Hong Kong for home in 1933" because HHH was 16 or 17 at Fredericksburg, so born in 1845 or 1846. He writes in the preface to the bio that he wrote it when "over sixty milestones were passed," which is how I came up with the 1906 date.

Jesus Christ, anyway, the point of this post was that AAH penned those dark thoughts when he was only 25 years old.

Had some loosening of association my ownself there.