PRAY excuse one more refusal of your kind and seasonable invitation, so
often repeated, to come and stay with you at the "Sycamores." Believe
me, there is nobody in the world than yourself I had rather live with if
obliged to choose somebody. But to pass more than a few hours at a
stretch in anyone's house besides my own, is more than I can abide,
unless now and then for a night or so at an hotel, where I am not
expected to notice anybody, and nobody minds me except the waiters in
attendance, whom I am not ashamed of giving trouble. Besides, my dear
fellow, you have no idea of what my making myself at home in your
quarters as I do in my own would mean. Am in the first place, a very
late riser. If my mind is occupied with any problem, usually lie in bed
and think it out, very often until noon, or, even later.
When I have done breakfast (invariably taken in my own room), I always
smoke a pipe, and then set-to at reading or writing for a longer or
shorter time, and go on smoking at intervals in the meanwhile. Sometimes
sit and meditate till I lapse into a brown study, and am then liable to
dream day-dreams, and fall into fits of unconscious cerebration, in
which I frequently start up and spout SHAKSPEARE, or sing songs, or hum
passages in operas, oratorios, symphonies, and overtures, a trick which,
as my voice is very harsh and discordant, would of course be most
irritating and offensive to anybody who could hear me, as would be
generally the case anywhere out of my own den. Could never bear to be
punctual to meal times, must always dine at what time it suits me; am
utterly incapable of observing regular hours.
So I might go on. But I trust I have now said enough to show you what a
bore I should be if I were to repay your generous importunity to become
your guest and do whatever I pleased so ill as to comply with it.
Enough. I am afraid I have already bored you with much too long a
letter. Let me only add that almost all social amusements, particularly
cards and dancing, and every sort of small talk, common-place
conversation, chaff, or gossip, or discussion of any subject, except
philosophy, science, politics and theology, on which I am prone to
argument, whilst my opponents generally lose their temper--are all so
many bores of the very first magnitude to your sincerely candid and
scrupulously outspoken friend,
_Tub Snuggery._ ANTONY CAVEBEAR.
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