.
A tomb!... Bitterly he granted the aptness of that description of his
cubicle: mausoleum of his every hope and aspiration, sepulchre of all
his ability and promise. In this narrow room his very self had been
extinguished: a man had degenerated into a machine. Everything that
caught his eye bore mute witness to this truth: the shabby tin alarm
clock on the battered bureau was one of a dynasty that had roused him
at six in the morning with unfailing regularity three hundred and
sixty-five times per year (Sundays were too rare in his calendar and
too precious to be wasted abed). From an iron hook in the window frame
dangled the elastic home-exerciser with which it was his unfailing
habit to perform a certain number of matutinal contortions, to keep
his body wholesome and efficient. Beneath the bed was visible the rim
of a shallow English tub that made possible his subsequent sponge
bath....
A machine; a fixture; creature of an implacable routine; a spirit
immolated upon the altar of habit: into this he had degenerated in ten
years. Such was the effect of life in this melancholy shelter for the
homeless wage-slave. He was no lonely victim. In his term he had seen
many another come in hope, linger in disappointment, leave only to go
to a meaner cell in the same stratum of misfortune.
Was this radiant spirit of youth and gentle loveliness (who might, for
all one knew to the contrary, be Marian Blessington after all) to be
suffered to become one of that disconsolate crew?
What could be done to prevent it?
Nothing that the wits of P.
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