第4章 ON BEING IDLE.(3)

I think myself that I could keep out of bed all right if I once got out.It is the wrenching away of the head from the pillow that I find so hard,and no amount of over-night determination makes it easier.Isay to myself,after having wasted the whole evening,"Well,I won't do any more work to-night;I'll get up early to-morrow morning;"and Iam thoroughly resolved to do so--then.In the morning,however,Ifeel less enthusiastic about the idea,and reflect that it would have been much better if I had stopped up last night.And then there is the trouble of dressing,and the more one thinks about that the more one wants to put it off.

It is a strange thing this bed,this mimic grave,where we stretch our tired limbs and sink away so quietly into the silence and rest."0bed,0bed,delicious bed,that heaven on earth to the weary head,"as sang poor Hood,you are a kind old nurse to us fretful boys and girls.

Clever and foolish,naughty and good,you take us all in your motherly lap and hush our wayward crying.The strong man full of care--the sick man full of pain--the little maiden sobbing for her faithless lover--like children we lay our aching heads on your white bosom,and you gently soothe us off to by-by.

Our trouble is sore indeed when you turn away and will not comfort us.

How long the dawn seems coming when we cannot sleep!Oh!those hideous nights when we toss and turn in fever and pain,when we lie,like living men among the dead,staring out into the dark hours that drift so slowly between us and the light.And oh!those still more hideous nights when we sit by another in pain,when the low fire startles us every now and then with a falling cinder,and the tick of the clock seems a hammer beating out the life that we are watching.

But enough of beds and bedrooms.I have kept to them too long,even for an idle fellow.Let us come out and have a smoke.That wastes time just as well and does not look so bad.Tobacco has been a blessing to us idlers.What the civil-service clerk before Sir Walter's time found to occupy their minds with it is hard to imagine.

I attribute the quarrelsome nature of the Middle Ages young men entirely to the want of the soothing weed.They had no work to do and could not smoke,and the consequence was they were forever fighting and rowing.If,by any extraordinary chance,there was no war going,then they got up a deadly family feud with the next-door neighbor,and if,in spite of this,they still had a few spare moments on their hands,they occupied them with discussions as to whose sweetheart was the best looking,the arguments employed on both sides being battle-axes,clubs,etc.Questions of taste were soon decided in those days.When a twelfth-century youth fell in love he did not take three paces backward,gaze into her eyes,and tell her she was too beautiful to live.He said he would step outside and see about it.

And if,when he got out,he met a man and broke his head--the other man's head,I mean--then that proved that his--the first fellow's--girl was a pretty girl.But if the other fellow broke hishead--not his own,you know,but the other fellow's--the other fellow to the second fellow,that is,because of course the other fellow would only be the other fellow to him,not the first fellow who--well,if he broke his head,then hisgirl--not the other fellow's,but the fellow who wasthe--Look here,if A broke B's head,then A's girl was a pretty girl;but if B broke A's head,then A's girl wasn't a pretty girl,but B's girl was.That was their method of conducting art criticism.

Nowadays we light a pipe and let the girls fight it out among themselves.

They do it very well.They are getting to do all our work.They are doctors,and barristers,and artists.They manage theaters,and promote swindles,and edit newspapers.I am looking forward to the time when we men shall have nothing to do but lie in bed till twelve,read two novels a day,have nice little five-o'clock teas all to ourselves,and tax our brains with nothing more trying than discussions upon the latest patterns in trousers and arguments as to what Mr.Jones'coat was made of and whether it fitted him.It is a glorious prospect--for idle fellows.