catering to the lowest tastes and prejudices of the public, or the
self-made capitalist who argues that every man has his price, and seeks
to accomplish legislation by bribery?
The _Use of Time_.
I.
I brought Rogers home with me again the other day. I do not mean
Rogers in the flesh; but the example of Rogers as a bogy with which to
confound my better half and myself. You may recall that Rogers is the
book-keeper for Patterson the banker, and that he has brought up and
educated a family on a salary of twenty-two hundred dollars a year.
“Barbara,” said I, “we were reflecting yesterday that we never have
time to do the things we really wish to do. Have you ever considered
how Rogers spends his time?”
My wife admitted that she had not, and she dutifully waited for me to
proceed, though I could tell from the expression of her mouth that
she did not expect to derive much assistance from the example of Mr.
Rogers. Therefore I made an interesting pathological deduction to begin
with.
“Rogers does not live on his nerves from one year’s end to the other,
as we do.”
“I congratulate him,” said Barbara, with a sigh.
“And yet,” I continued, “he leads a highly respectable and fairly
interesting life. He gets up at precisely the same hour every morning,
has his breakfast, reads the paper, and is at his desk punctually on
time. He dines frugally, returns to his desk until half-past four or
five, and after performing any errands which Mrs. Rogers has asked him
to attend to, goes home to the bosom of his family. There he exchanges
his coat and boots for a dressing-gown, or aged smoking-jacket, and
slippers, and remains by his fireside absorbed in the evening paper
until tea-time. Conversation with the members of his family beguiles
him for half an hour after the completion of the meal; then he settles
down to the family weekly magazine, or plays checkers or backgammon
with his wife or daughters. After a while, if he is interested in
ferns or grasses, he looks to see how his specimens are growing under
the glass case in the corner. He pats the cat and makes sure that the
canary is supplied with seed. Now and then he brings home a puzzle,
like ‘Pigs in Clover,’ which keeps him up half an hour later than
usual, but ordinarily his head is nodding before the stroke of ten
warns him that his bed-hour has come. And just at the time that the
wife of his employer, Patterson, may be setting out for a ball, he is
tucking himself up in bed by the side of Mrs. Rogers.”
“Poor man!” interjected Barbara.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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