was the most regular and simple possible. When it is
said that breakfast was at nine, after a little reading,[2] dinner at
four, tea at six, supper at half-past nine, and the intervals filled up
with reading or writing, except that he regularly walked between two and
four, and took a short sleep before tea, the outline of his day during
those long seasons when he was in full work will have been given. After
supper, when the business of the day seemed to be over, though he
generally took a book, he remained with his family, and was open to
enter into conversation, to amuse and to be amused. It was on such times
that the most pleasant fireside chattings, and the most interesting
stories came forth; and, indeed, it was at such a time (though long
before my day) that The Doctor was originated, as may be seen by the
beginning of that work and the Preface to the new edition.
Notwithstanding that the very mention of "my glass of punch," the one,
temperate, never exceeded glass of punch, may be a stumbling-block to
some of my readers, I am constrained, by the very love of the perfect
picture which the first lines of The Doctor convey of the conclusion of
his evening, to transcribe them in this place. It was written but for a
few, otherwise The Doctor would have been no secret at all; but those
few who knew him in his home will see his very look while they re-peruse
it, and will recall the well-known sound:

"I was in the fourth night of the story of the Doctor and his horse, and
had broken it off, not, like Scheherazade, because it was time to get
up, but because it was time to go to bed. It was at thirty-five minutes
after ten o'clock on the 20th of July, in the year of our Lord 1813. I
finished my glass of punch, tinkled the spoon against its side, as if
making music to my own meditations, and having fixed my eyes upon the
Bhow Begum, who was sitting opposite to me at the head of her own table,
I said, 'It ought to be written in a book.'"

This scene took place at the table of the Bhow Begum,[3] but it may
easily be transferred to his ordinary room, where he sat after supper in
one corner, with the fire on his left hand and a small table on his
right, looking on at his family circle in front of him.

I have said before, as indeed his own letters have abundantly shown,
that he was a most thoroughly domestic man, in that his whole pleasure
and happiness was centred in his home; but yet, from the course of his
pursuits, his f