Paul, in the famous passage when he says
there is a time for this and a time for that, had mentioned
kissing, he would have done a great deal of practical good.
July 13th.
To-night, for the first time since I came into the family estates
(such as they are), I feel the paralysis of aspiration occasioned
by poverty. If I were very rich, I would buy the two next
houses, pull them down and erect on the site a tower forty foot
high. At the very top would be one comfortable room to be
reached by a lift, and in this room I could have my being, while
it listed me, and be secure from all kinds of incursions and
interruptions. Antoinette's one-eyed cat could not scratch for
admittance; Antoinette herself could not enter under pretext of
domestic economics and lure me into profitless gossip; and I
could defy Carlotta, who is growing to be as pervasive as the
smell of pickles over Crosse & Blackwell's factory. She comes in
without knocking, looks at picture-books, sprawls about doing
nothing, smokes my best cigarettes, hums tunes which she has
picked up from barrel-organs, bends over me to see what I am
writing, munching her eternal sweetmeats in my ear, and laughs at
me when I tell her she has irremediably broken the thread of my
ideas.
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