HOUSE AND HOME.
My Dear Moneypenny,
Pray excuse one more refusal of your kind and seasonable invitation, so often repeated, to come and stay with you at the "Sycamores." Believe me, there is nobody in the world than yourself I had rather live with if obliged to choose somebody. But to pass more than a few hours at a stretch in anyone's house besides my own, is more than I can abide, unless now and then for a night or so at an hotel, where I am not expected to notice anybody, and nobody minds me except the waiters in attendance, whom I am not ashamed of giving trouble. Besides, my dear fellow, you have no idea of what my making myself at home in your quarters as I do in my own would mean. Am in the first place, a very late riser. If my mind is occupied with any problem, usually lie in bed and think it out, very often until noon, or, even later.
When I have done breakfast (invariably taken in my own room), I always smoke a pipe, and then set-to at reading or writing for a longer or shorter time, and go on smoking at intervals in the meanwhile. Sometimes sit and meditate till I lapse into a brown study, and am then liable to dream day-dreams, and fall into fits of unconscious cerebration, in which I frequently start up and spout Shakspeare, or sing songs, or hum passages in operas, oratorios, symphonies, and overtures, a trick which, as my voice is very harsh and discordant, would of course be most irritating and offensive to anybody who could hear me, as would be generally the case anywhere out of my own den. Could never bear to be punctual to meal times, must always dine at what time it suits me; am utterly incapable of observing regular hours.
So I might go on. But I trust I have now said enough to show you what a bore I should be if I were to repay your generous importunity to become your guest and do whatever I pleased so ill as to comply with it. Enough. I am afraid I have already bored you with much too long a letter. Let me only add that almost all social amusements, particularly cards and dancing, and every sort of small talk, common-place conversation, chaff, or gossip, or discussion of any subject, except philosophy, science, politics and theology, on which I am prone to argument, whilst my opponents generally lose their temper—are all so many bores of the very first magnitude to your sincerely candid and scrupulously outspoken friend,
Tub Snuggery.
Antony Cavebear.