The Sort of Life We Lead 39 



and, after a little music, we decided to go to bed, 

 omitting the usual literary exercises, and rejecting 

 A.'s proposition to read a chapter on mental lazi- 

 ness. The dinner enlivened by a heated discussion 

 over the "good gray poet," now reported to be very 

 low in health. 



I do not know whether this little extract 

 from my diary gives a picture which impresses 

 the casual reader as pleasant or the reverse. 

 Not once during such a week had I to discuss 

 unpleasant matters, or distressingly common- 

 place matters with unpleasant or common- 

 place people. I had earned enough money by 

 writing to more than pay the modest cost of 

 this life. Everything but the groceries and 

 the little meat required we had supplied our- 

 selves the vegetables, the eggs, the chickens, 

 the oysters, the crabs, the honey, and the 

 apples the last stolen. No doubt chopping 

 down wood, although an occupation much 

 affected by a famous Englishman perhaps the 

 most famous Englishman of this age, might 

 appeal to some of us, owing to the idiotic 

 Anglomania of the day, but it is not the sort 



