You may remember seeing at my house my friend Mr. M.[78:1] He was at Oxford a very good-humoured fellow, and every body liked him; but he never could contrive to be in time for any thing. He got imposition upon imposition for being too late for chapel; he came to dine in hall when other men were going away; and his friends were almost afraid of making an appointment with him, either for business or for amusement, because they knew beforehand that he would not keep it. When, after leaving Oxford, he established himself as a country gentleman in his paternal mansion, the same habit still clung to him. No time was fixed for any thing, or if it was fixed, it was never kept. Neither his guests nor his servants knew at what hour either breakfast, or dinner, or any other domestic arrangement, would take place. Consequently, their time and their spirits were wasted in uncertainty. When engaged to dine at a neighbour's, perhaps he would forget the engagement altogether; or, if he chanced to remember it, would not arrive till the master of the feast had given him up in despair, after allowing possibly an extra half hour, during which, the solemn pause which sometimes takes place before dinner, had become more solemn, from the annoyance of seeing a whole party kept waiting by the unpunctuality of one person. The servants, meanwhile, were yawning and fidgetting backwards and forwards in the listlessness of expectation; the cook perplexed with the sore dilemma of seeing all the productions of her skill, either chilled with cold from being kept back, or burnt to a cinder; and the temper even of the lady of the house a little out of tune, from the certainty that the dinner would be spoiled. Of all these various vexations, the sole cause was to be found in Mr. M.'s want of energy. He could not bring himself, perhaps, either to shorten a pleasant ride, or to lay down a book which interested him, or to quit his own chair by the fire-side, in order to dress. The convenience and comfort, and for a time the good humour, of a whole company, were to be sacrificed to his indolence, his _vis inertiæ_, and unpunctuality.