Irwine this Friday morning, and he is awake and dressing
so early that he determines to go before breakfast, instead of after.
The rector, he knows, breakfasts alone at half-past nine, the ladies of
the family having a different breakfast-hour; Arthur will have an early
ride over the hill and breakfast with him. One can say everything best
over a meal.
The progress of civilization has made a breakfast or a dinner an
easy and cheerful substitute for more troublesome and disagreeable
ceremonies. We take a less gloomy view of our errors now our father
confessor listens to us over his egg and coffee. We are more distinctly
conscious that rude penances are out of the question for gentlemen in
an enlightened age, and that mortal sin is not incompatible with an
appetite for muffins. An assault on our pockets, which in more barbarous
times would have been made in the brusque form of a pistol-shot, is
quite a well-bred and smiling procedure now it has become a request for
a loan thrown in as an easy parenthesis between the second and third
glasses of claret.
Still, there was this advantage in the old rigid forms, that they
committed you to the fulfilment of a resolution by some outward deed:
when you have put your mouth to one end of a hole in a stone wall and
are aware that there is an expectant ear at the other end, you are more
likely to say what you came out with the intention of saying than if you
were seated with your legs in an easy attitude under the mahogany with
a companion who will have no reason to be surprised if you have nothing
particular to say.
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