HOMEWARD BOUND 



life ; it was all such a change. At one time if the 

 party had to be prolonged after being turned out of a 

 restaurant at half-past twelve, there was only one of 

 two things to do : go to a club with men only, or accept 

 an extended invitation to a house or flat where it 

 didn't matter if the piano was played till cockcrow. 

 In some professions it doesn't matter much getting 

 up at nine o'clock in the morning, and that is one great 

 advantage of the newspaper business. When you 

 are on morning-paper work there are the accustomed 

 late hours, and on an evening paper, so long as latest 

 intelligence is provided by boy messenger, telegraph 

 or telephone for the first edition, active touch is kept. 

 I always pitied some of my friends who had either to 

 be in their office at nine o'clock, had to be in wig and 

 gown at the Law Courts at ten o'clock, or keep an 

 early appointment on a matter of moment. To them 

 bed should be a very sweet place, but there is a 

 fascination about the small hours. In my case it was 

 engendered by working for many years at night andj 

 acquiring the supper habit as opposed to dinner. l' 

 have always been a big trencherman after eleven 

 o'clock at night. There are many who talk of the 

 hopelessness of going to roost after a big meal, but 

 doesn't a dog stretch himself out after his main 

 repast, and doesn't a snake go to sleep for a week after 

 he is gorged ? The small clubs for those Bohemians 

 who sit up have been the object of attack at the time 

 this chapter is written. How it will end doesn't make 

 so much matter, but so long as the grandmotherly 

 business exists of driving people into the street less 

 than an hour after some of the theatres close, so will 

 the attempt be made to evade the law. Certainly the 

 small clubs which I found existed were attractive to the 

 many foreign visitors who managed to get the entree. 



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