And I abandon you there till six
o'clock. I am aware that you have nominally an hour (often in
reality an hour and a half) in the midst of the day, less than half
of which time is given to eating. But I will leave you all that to
spend as you choose. You may read your newspapers then.
I meet you again as you emerge from your office. You are pale and
tired. At any rate, your wife says you are pale, and you give her to
understand that you are tired. During the journey home you have
been gradually working up the tired feeling. The tired feeling
hangs heavy over the mighty suburbs of London like a virtuous and
melancholy cloud, particularly in winter. You don't eat immediately
on your arrival home. But in about an hour or so you feel as if you
could sit up and take a little nourishment. And you do. Then you
smoke, seriously; you see friends; you potter; you play cards; you
flirt with a book; you note that old age is creeping on; you take a
stroll; you caress the piano.... By Jove! a quarter past eleven.
You then devote quite forty minutes to thinking about going to bed;
and it is conceivable that you are acquainted with a genuinely good
whisky.
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