er and further into dissipation,
going out for a long walk every morning and listening to the band in
the pavilion every evening. But the days still passed slowly
notwithstanding, and I was heartily glad when the last one came and I
was being whirled away from gouty, consumptive Buxton to London with its
stern work and life. I looked out of the carriage as we rushed through
Hendon in the evening. The lurid glare overhanging the mighty city
seemed to warm my heart, and when, later on, my cab rattled out of St.
Pancras' station, the old familiar roar that came swelling up around me
sounded the sweetest music I had heard for many a long day.

I certainly did not enjoy that month's idling. I like idling when I
ought not to be idling; not when it is the only thing I have to do. That
is my pig-headed nature. The time when I like best to stand with my
back to the fire, calculating how much I owe, is when my desk is heaped
highest with letters that must be answered by the next post. When I like
to dawdle longest over my dinner is when I have a heavy evening's work
before me. And if, for some urgent reason, I ought to be up particularly
early in the morning, it is then, more than at any other time, that I
love to lie an extra half-hour in bed.

Ah! how delicious it is to turn over and go to sleep again: "just for
five minutes." Is there any human being, I wonder, besides the hero of
a Sunday-school "tale for boys," who ever gets up willingly? There
are some men to whom getting up at the proper time is an utter
impossibility. If eight o'clock happens to be the time that they should
turn out, then they lie till half-past. If circumstances change and
half-past eight becomes early enough for them, then it is nine before
they can rise. They are like the statesman of whom it was said that he
was always punctually half an hour late. They try all manner of schemes.
They buy alarm-clocks (artful contrivances that go off at the wrong time
and alarm the wrong people). They tell Sarah Jane to knock at the door
and call them, and Sarah Jane does knock at the door and does call them,
and they grunt back "awri" and then go comfortably to sleep again. I
knew one man who would actually get out and have a cold bath; and even
that was of no use, for afterward he would jump into bed again to warm
himself.

I think myself that I could keep out of bed all right if I once got
out. It is the wrenching away of the head from the pillow that I find so