olitude. There is no pleasure in the world
like waking up in the morning and feeling that absolutely the whole day
is at one's disposal; that one can work when one likes, go out when it
is fine, have one's meals when one prefers, even when one is hungry.
There is no one near enough to drop in, in this blissful corner of the
world, and a caller is a rare bird. I have too much to do ever to be
bored, and indeed the day is seldom long enough for all I have
designed. Best of all, my work, though abundant, is seldom pressing. I
have hardly ever anything to do that must be done that moment. With
some people that would end in putting off everything till the last
moment, but that is not the case with me. The greatest luxury I know is
to have accumulated stores of work on which one can draw; and my
tendency is, if ever a piece of work is entrusted to me, to do it at
once. I have few gregarious instincts, I suppose. I like eating alone,
reading alone, and walking alone. There is also a good deal to be said
for learning to enjoy solitude, for it is the one luxury that a man
without any close home ties can command. An independent bachelor is
sure, whether he likes it or not, to have, as life goes on, more and
more enforced solitude--that is, if he detests living in a town. I have
not even nephews and nieces whom it would be natural to see something
of; and thus it is a wise economy to practise for solitude.

From the point of view of work, too, it is undeniably delightful. I
need never suspend a train of thought; I can write till I have finished
a subject. There is never the abominable necessity of stopping in the
middle of a sentence, with the prospect of having laboriously to
recapture the mood; and it is the same with reading. If I am interested
in a book, I can read on till I am satiated. Never before in my life
have I had the chance of reading, as Theocrite praised God, "morning,
evening, noon, and night." But now, if I get really absorbed in a
volume, I can let the whole story, tragedy or comedy, open before me,
take its course, and draw to a close. The result is that I find I can
apprehend a book in a way that I have never apprehended one before, in
its entirety; one can enter wholly and completely into the mind of an
author, into the progress of a biography; so that to read a book now is
like sitting out a play.

All this is very delightful; and no less delightful, too, is it, if the
mood takes me, to wander off for a whol