north-eastern parts) frequently. "I cannot sit and think," he said. Tired
with exercise, he went to bed early, except when friends supped with him;
and he always rose early, from necessity, being obliged to attend at his
office, in Leadenhall Street, every day, from ten until four o'clock--
sometimes later. It was there that his familiar letters were written. On
his return, after a humble meal, he strolled (if it was summer) into the
suburbs, or traversed the streets where the old bookshops were to be
found. He seldom or never gave dinners. You were admitted at all times to
his plain supper, which was sufficiently good when any visitor came; at
other times, it was spare. "We have _tried_ to eat suppers," Miss Lamb
writes to Mrs. Hazlitt, "but we left our appetites behind us; and the dry
loaf, which offended you, now comes in at night unaccompanied." You were
sure of a welcome at his house; sure of easy, unfettered talk. After
supper you might smoke a pipe with your host, or gossip (upon any subject)
with him or his sensible sister.

Perhaps the pipe was the only thing in which Lamb really exceeded. He was
fond of it from the very early years when he was accustomed to smoke
"Orinooko" at the "Salutation and Cat," with Coleridge, in 1796. He
attempted on several occasions to give it up, but his struggles were
overcome by counter influences. "Tobacco," he says, "stood in its own
light." At last, in 1805, he was able to conquer and abandon it--for a
time. His success, like desertion from a friend, caused some remorse and a
great deal of regret. In writing to Coleridge about his house, which was
"smoky," he inquires, "Have you cured it? It is hard to cure anything of
smoking." Apart from the mere pleasure of smoking, the narcotic soothed
his nerves and controlled those perpetual apprehensions which his sister's
frequent illnesses excited. Of Mary Lamb, Hazlitt has said (somewhere)
that she was the most rational and wisest woman whom he had ever known.
Lamb and his sister had an open party once a week, every Wednesday