the loss of Time in the Times, and, after a long, blank, brown, and blue
study, leaving behind you a most miserable chronicle indeed! Then
think--O think--on all your aimless forenoon saunterings--round and
round about the premises--up and down the avenue--then into the garden
on tiptoe--in and out among the neat squares of onion-beds--now humming
a tune by the brink of abysses of mould, like trenches dug for the slain
in the field of battle, where the tender celery is laid--now down to the
river-side to try a little angling, though you well know there is
nothing to be had but Pars--now into a field of turnips, without your
double-barreled Joe Manton, (at Mr. Wilkinson's to be repaired,) to see
Ponto point a place where once a partridge had pruned himself--now home
again, at the waving of John's red sleeve, to receive a coach-full of
country cousins, come in the capacity of forenoon callers--endless
talkers all--sharp and blunt noses alike--and grinning voraciously in
hopes of a lunch--now away to dress for dinner, which will not be for
two long, long hours to come--now dozing, or daized on the drawing-room
sofa, wondering if the bell is ever to be rung--now grimly gazing on a
bit of bloody beef which your impatience has forced the blaspheming cook
to draw from the spit ere the outer folds of fat were well melted at the
fire--now, after a disappointed dinner, discovering that the old port is
corked, and the filberts all pluffing with bitter snuff, except such as
enclose a worm--now an unwholesome sleep of interrupted snores, your
bobbing head ever and anon smiting your breast-bone--now burnt-beans
palmed off on the family for Turkish coffee--now a game at cards, with a
dead partner, and the ace of spades missing--now no supper--you have no
appetite for supper--and now into bed tumbles the son of Genius,
complaining to the moon of the shortness of human life, and the
fleetness of time!

_Blackwood's Magazine_.