Snippets (The Straggler) (nonfiction)
Things to use or delete. See Snippets.
New Every Morning
Is anybody in a good humor at breakfast? Well, Mr. Pickwick was. Our last glimpse of that gentleman is at the breakfast table after the marriage of Mr. Snodgrass. "Mr. Pickwick, having said grace, pauses for an instant, and looks around him. As he does so, the tears roll down his cheeks, in the fulness of his joy."
All right for him. In those days the gentry breakfasted at ten, even without the excuse of a morning wedding, and drank Madeira with their broiled ham and eggs, and had a day of idleness in front of them. For us working stiffs it's the 6 a.m. trill of the alarm clock, the groping for clothes in darkness from consideration for the spouse still asleep, the stumble downstairs to the kitchen, a grayish dawn showing beyond the windows. It's not Dickens who comes to my mind at such moments but the anonymous author of "Hierusalem, my Happy Home":
No dampish mist is seen in thee,
Nor cold nor darksome night …