HOW I GOT MY OVERCOAT. 139 



The world was before me for a choice, but I 

 had no choice. The only thing I could do was 

 to command mounted troops, and commanders 

 of mounted troops were not in demand. Ages 

 ago I had known how to do other things, but 

 the knowledge had gone from me, and was not 

 to be recalled so long as I had enough money 

 left with which to be unhappy in idle forebod- 

 ing. I had not laid down my life in the war, 

 but during its wonderful four years I had laid 

 down, so completely, the ways of life of a sober 

 and industrious citizen, and had soaked my whole 

 nature so full of the subtile ether of idleness 

 and vagabondism, that it seemed as easy and as 

 natural to become the Aladdin I might have 

 dreamed myself to be as the delver I had really 

 been. With a heavy heart, then, and a full 

 stomach, I sat in a half-disconsolate, half-remi- 

 niscent, not wholly unhappy mood, relapsing with 

 post - prandial ease into that befogged intellec- 

 tual condition in which even the drizzle against 

 the window-panes can confuse itself with the 

 patter on a tent roof; and the charm of the 



