How they settled even such minor questions
as to which party should decide whether and how much the window
should be open and how many blankets should be on the bed, and at
what hour they should go to bed and get up so as to avoid
disturbing one another's sleep, seemed insoluble questions to me.
But the members of the conference did not seem to mind. They were
content to have the whole national housing problem treated on a
basis of one room for two people. That was the essence of marriage
for them.
Please remember, too, that there was nothing in their
circumstances to check intemperance. They were men of business:
that is, men for the most part engaged in routine work which
exercized neither their minds nor their bodies to the full pitch
of their capacities. Compared with statesmen, first-rate
professional men, artists, and even with laborers and artisans as
far as muscular exertion goes, they were underworked, and could
spare the fine edge of their faculties and the last few inches of
their chests without being any the less fit for their daily
routine. If I had adopted their habits, a startling deterioration
would have appeared in my writing before the end of a fortnight,
and frightened me back to what they would have considered an
impossible asceticism.
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