I mention a few of the ten million directions in which his secret
desire may point or have pointed. I have probably not mentioned the
right direction. But he can find it. He can perhaps find several right
directions without too much trouble.

And now he says:

"I suppose you mean me to 'take up' one of these things?"

I do, seeing that he has hitherto neglected so clear a duty. If he had
attended to it earlier, and with perseverance he would not be in the
humiliating situation of exclaiming bitterly that he has no pleasure
in life.

"But," he resists, "you know perfectly well that I have no time!"

To which I am obliged to make reply:

"My dear sir, it is not your wife you are talking to. Kindly be honest
with me."

I admit that his business is very exhausting and exigent. For the sake
of argument I will grant that he cannot safely give it an instant's
less time than he is now giving it. But even so his business does not
absorb at the outside more than seventy hours of the hundred and ten
hours during which he is wide awake each week. The rest of the time he
spends either in performing necessary acts in a tedious way or in
performing acts which are not only tedious to him, but utterly
unnecessary (for his own hypothesis is that he gets no pleasure out of