When I like to dawdle longest over my dinner is when I have a heavy
evening's work before me. And if, for some urgent reason, I ought to
be up particularly early in the morning, it is then, more than at any
other time, that I love to lie an extra half-hour in bed.

Ah! how delicious it is to turn over and go to sleep again: "just for
five minutes." Is there any human being, I wonder, besides the hero
of a Sunday-school "tale for boys," who ever gets up willingly? There
are some men to whom getting up at the proper time is an utter
impossibility. If eight o'clock happens to be the time that they
should turn out, then they lie till half-past. If circumstances
change and half-past eight becomes early enough for them, then it is
nine before they can rise. They are like the statesman of whom it was
said that he was always punctually half an hour late. They try all
manner of schemes. They buy alarm-clocks (artful contrivances that go
off at the wrong time and alarm the wrong people). They tell Sarah
Jane to knock at the door and call them, and Sarah Jane does knock at
the door and does call them, and they grunt back "awri" and then go
comfortably to sleep again. I knew one man who would actually get out
and have a cold bath; and even that was of no use, for afterward he
would jump into bed again to warm himself.

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. I
say 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 I
am thoroughly resolved to do so--then. In the morning, however, I
feel 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