Instances of absolute
idleness are very rare. So, by ten, A. M., all the men betake themselves
to their offices, and there busy themselves about their affairs, after a
fashion, energetic or desultory, till after two o'clock. The dinner hour
varies from three to half-past five. Post-prandial labor is generally
declined; wisely, too, for few American digestions will bear trifling
with; though Nature must have gifted some of my acquaintance with a
marvellous internal mechanism. How, otherwise, could they stand a long
unbroken course of free living, with such infinitesimal correctives of
exercise? The evening is spent after each man's fancy--at the club, or
at one of the many houses where a familiar is certain to meet a welcome,
and more or less of pleasant company. The entertainments are often more
extensive and formal, embracing, of course, music, and such are
invariably wound up by a supper. I have heard certain of our seniors
grow quite pathetic over the abolition of those social, if unsalubrious,
repasts. I wonder at such regrets no longer, if I cannot share them.
There is surely an hilarious informality about these _media-nochi_ that
attaches to no antecedent feast; the freedom of a picnic, without its
manifold inconveniences: as the witching hour draws nearer, the
"brightest eyes that ever have shone" glitter yet more gloriously, till
in their nearer and dearer splendor a Chaldean would forget the stars;
and the "sweetest lips that ever were kissed" sip the creaming Verzenay,
or savor the delicate "olio," with a keener honesty of zest.
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