able part of the day, the sweet summer evenings,
when the tired world grows fragrant and cool.

One ought to have a routine for home life certainly; but it is not
wholesome when one begins to grudge the slightest variation from the
programme. I speak philosophically, because I am in the grip of the
evil myself. The reason why I care so little for staying anywhere, and
even for travelling, is because it disarranges my plan of the day, and
I don't feel certain of being able to secure the time for writing which
I love. But this is wrong; it is vivendi perdere causas, and I think we
ought resolutely to court a difference of life at intervals, and to
learn to bear with equanimity the suspension of one's daily habits. You
are certainly wise, if you find it suits you, to secure the morning for
writing. Personally my mind is not at its best then; it is dulled and
weakened by sleep, and it requires the tonic of routine work and bodily
exercise before it expands and flourishes.

Another grievous tendency which grows on me is an incapacity for
idleness. That will amuse you, when you remember the long evenings at
Eton which we used to spend in vacant talk. I remember so well your
saying after tea one evening, in that poky room of yours with the
barred windows at the end of the upper passage, "How delightful to
think that there are four hours with nothing whatever to do!" Do you
remember, too, that night when we sate at tea, blissfully, wholesomely
tired after a college match? John and Ellen, those strange, gruff
beings, came in to wash up, carrying that horrible, steaming can of
tea-dregs in which our cups were plunged: they cleared the table as we
sate; it was over before six, and it was not till the prayer-bell rang
at 9.30 that we became aware we had sate the whole evening with the
table between us. What DID we talk about? I wish to Heaven I could sit
and talk like that now! That is another thing which grows upon me, my
dislike of mere chatting: it is not priggish to say it, because I
regret and abominate my stupidity in that respect. But there is nothing
now which induces more rapid and more desperate physical fatigue than
to sit still and know I have to pump up talk for an hour.

The moral of all this is that YOU must take good care to form habits,
and _I_ must take care to unform them. YOU must resist the temptation
to read the papers, to stroll, to talk to your children; and _I_ must
try to cultivate leisurely propensities