ABSTRACT
Among my friends I am considered no slugabed, indeed I myself hitherto imagined I was an early riser, but my vis-à-vis at table never, apparently, goes to bed at all. Whether he sleeps in the saloon all night I cannot say, but no matter when I turn up for breakfast — and today I almost anticipated the advertised hour — there sits Energy, washing his hands with invisible soap, with some statistical problem for me to solve. is morning while I was making the usual inane, selfevident platitude upon the weather — which is glorious — he burst in on my mediocrity with the conundrum as to what had been done with all the earth dug out of the globe in making the London tubes. Of course I hadn’t the foggiest notion, and admitted so at once. I read yesterday, in a book on India, that an ingenious syce, all arguments, chastisement and blasphemy having failed to budge his obdurate pony, at last hit upon the novel device of slamming a handful of mud into its open mouth, with satisfactory results; but it appearing futile to suggest that the British Workman had been need for the double purpose of excavating and consuming subterranean London, I ordered eggs and bacon and insisted on the charm of the morning.
