Sybarite many a night of bedside
vigil. On the floor below lived a maiden lady whose quenchless hopes
still centred about his amiable person. Downstairs in the clammy
parlour he had whiled away unnumbered hours assisting at dreary
"bridge drives," or playing audience to amateur recitals on the aged
and decrepit "family organ." For an entire decade he had occupied the
same chair at the same table in the basement dining-room, feasting on
beef, mutton, Irish stew, ham-and-beans, veal, pork, or
just-hash--according to the designated day of the week....
The very room in which he sat was somehow dear to him; upon it he
wasted a sentiment in a way akin to that with which one regards the
grave of a beloved friend; it was, in fact, the tomb of his own youth.
Its narrow and impoverished bed had groaned with the restless weight
of him all those many nights through which he had lain wakeful, in
impotent mutiny against the outrageous circumstances that made him a
prisoner there. Its walls had muted the sighs in which the desires of
youth had been spent. Its floor matting was worn threadbare with the
impatient pacings of his feet (four strides from door to window: swing
and repeat _ad libitum_). Its solitary gas-jet had, with begrudged
illumination, sicklied o'er the pages of those innumerable borrowed
books with which he had sought to dull poignant self-consciousness...
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