The other evening when The P. G. S. of M. came into my study, he saw the morning paper lying unopened on the settle by the fireplace.
“Haven’t you read this yet?” he said.
“No, not to-day.”
“Where are you, anyway? Why not?”
I said I hadn’t felt up to it yet, didn’t feel profound enough—something to that effect.
The P. G. S. of M. thinks a newspaper should be read in ten minutes. He looked over at me with a sort of slow, pitying, Boston-Public-Library expression he has sometimes.
I behaved as well as I could—took no notice for a minute.
“The fact is, I have changed,” I said, “about papers and some things. I have times of thinking I’m improved considerably,” I added recklessly.
Still the same pained Boston-Public-Library expression—only turned on a little harder.
“Seems to me,” I said, “when a man can’t feel superior to other people in this world, he might at least be allowed the privilege of feeling superior to himself once in a while—spells of it.”