The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 2: Elia and The Last Essays of EliaLamb, Charles
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The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 2: Elia and The Last Essays of Elia
Lamb, Charles
English essays
There is yet another home, which we are constrained to deny to be one.
It has a larder, which the home of the poor man wants; its fireside
conveniences, of which the poor dream not. But with all this, it is no
home. It is--the house of the man that is infested with many visiters.
May we be branded for the veriest churl, if we deny our heart to the
many noble-hearted friends that at times exchange their dwelling for
our poor roof! It is not of guests that we complain, but of endless,
purposeless visitants; droppers in, as they are called. We sometimes
wonder from what sky they fall. It is the very error of the position
of our lodging; its horoscopy was ill calculated, being just situate
in a medium--a plaguy suburban mid-space--fitted to catch idlers from
town or country. We are older than we were, and age is easily put out
of its way. We have fewer sands in our glass to reckon upon, and we
cannot brook to see them drop in endlessly succeeding impertinences.
At our time of life, to be alone sometimes is as needful as sleep. It
is the refreshing sleep of the day. The growing infirmities of age
manifest themselves in nothing more strongly, than in an inveterate
dislike of interruption. The thing which we are doing, we wish to be
permitted to do. We have neither much knowledge nor devices; but there
are fewer in the place to which we hasten. We are not willingly put
out of our way, even at a game of nine-pins. While youth was, we had
vast reversions in time future; we are reduced to a present pittance,
and obliged to economise in that article. We bleed away our moments
now as hardly as our ducats. We cannot bear to have our thin wardrobe
eaten and fretted into by moths. We are willing to barter our good
time with a friend, who gives us in exchange his own. Herein is the
distinction between the genuine guest and the visitant. This latter
takes your good time, and gives you his bad in exchange. The guest
is domestic to you as your good cat, or household bird; the visitant
is your fly, that flaps in at your window, and out again, leaving
nothing but a sense of disturbance, and victuals spoiled. The inferior
functions of life begin to move heavily. We cannot concoct our food
with interruptions. Our chief meal, to be nutritive, must be solitary.
With difficulty we can eat before a guest; and never understood
what the relish of public feasting meant. Meats have no sapor, nor
digestion fair play, in a crowd. The unexpected coming in of a
visitant stops the machine. There is a punctual generation who time
their calls to the precise commencement of your dining-hour--not to
eat--but to see you eat. Our knife and fork drop instinctively, and we
feel that we have swallowed our latest morsel. Others again show their
genius, as we have said, in knocking the moment you have just sat down
to a book. They have a peculiar compassionating sneer, with which they
"hope that they do not interrupt your studies." Though they flutter
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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