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fetching, carrying, from one site to another, objects which are very well where they are, like those porters in Paris stations who can let nothing lie … such labours she can scarcely begin too late in the day. Consider the ant’s ways and be wise indeed, for her labour is like unto ours; we too are for ever dragging, fetching, carrying, changing, objects which are very well as they are … such labours we too can scarcely begin too late in the day. The advantage we have over the ant is that we know it; we have reason, she only instinct.
    Lie back, then, among pillows and, gently yet firmly encouched, await the onslaught of the bellicose day, whose buffets jar less rudely those who take them lying down. Yield to the storm; venture not out into it, and it will pass.
    Thou shalt have thy Caudles
    before thou dost arise:
    For churlishnesse breeds sicknesse
    and danger therin lies
.
    Thus spoke a better lover than all those who have shouted to wake their ladies at dawn, calling them slug-a-beds, pigs in straw, bidding them rise and dress and come a-maying, asking them why should they sleep when they have slept enough (what a question!), and, worst of all, telling them that their breakfast stays until they are up—water-gruel, sugar-sops, brown ale, and toast. A kind lover or husband would bring all these to the bedroom; an intelligent one would be consuming them there himself. After this meal (unless quite incapacitated by its various ingredients), you may lie and reflect on all the occupations and works which man has pursued in bed; how Milton therein composed much of
Paradise Lost;
how Dido and her court feasted Æneas and his warriors, and after supper listened to his mournful travelogue, all reclining on their couches; how emperors and dictators have lain on beds while damsels danced before them and made music; how Sir John Suckling practised and perfected in bed that card-playing by which he lived; how Hobbes did mathematics, drawing lines on his thigh and on the sheets; how generals have planned victories and ordered attacks; how the Kings of France received their ministers in bed and dispensed affairs of state; how Lady Mary Wortley Montague received poets, and Prime Ministers the news of victories; how men are born in bed, and frequently die there; how Samuel Pepys lay late with great pleasure, and Samuel Johnson lay all his life until noon or until two, purposing to rise at eight and telling young men that nobodywho did not rise early would ever come to good. Indeed, so much of the world’s business has been performed in bed, that even to begin to consider it will be a morning’s work. Rise early and bed late, says a foolish old adage, but does not explain why you will be better out of bed than in. A thing too often forgotten is that, once you are out of it, you or someone else will have to make it. There was a certain man named Æneas who had kept his bed eight years, whom St. Peter bade arise, and added that he was to make his bed. Æneas arose, and, we suppose, made his bed; but, after eight years of lying in it, this daily rising and making it must have seemed very strange, and we are not told how long it lasted.
    Indeed, more should be done in bed than is (even more). We spend too many of these precious clinic hours in blind stupor, tenebrizing it like polar bears in winter. Going to bed is a nocturnal pleasure; but not getting out of it is a journal one, to be enjoyed with all the innocent ardours and relish of the day. Slug then in sloth, and languish in delights, while the day breaks and shadows flee away.
    But the luxury of pleasure is marred, as time creeps on, by a bitter foreknowledge born of experience. Sooner or later some one of those who are under your roof, unless you have your roof all day to yourself, will enquire if you are ill, and, if you are well, at what hour you are proposing to rise. Why, in the name of all the great bed-lovers, should I be ill because I prefer to