A Commentary by John Galsworthy — Read

Each morning a noise of poured-out water revived him from that state in which his thoughts were occasionally irregular. Raising his face, with its regular nose above a regular moustache just going grey, he asked the time. Each morning he received the same answer, and would greet it with a yawn. Without this opening to his day he would not have known for certain that it had begun. Assured of the fact, he would leap from his bed into his bath, and sponge himself with cold, clear water. "Straight out of bed -- never lose heat! " Such was his saying; and he would maintain it against every other theory of the morning tub. It was his own discovery -- a fact on which, as on all facts, he set much store; and every morning he kept his mind fixed on its value. Then, in that underclothing, of which he said, "Never wear any other -- lets the skin act! " he would take his stand in a chosen light before a glass, dipping in boiling water a razor on which was written the day's name, and without vanity inspect his face to see that it preserved its shade of faintly mottled red against the encroachments of the town. Then, with a slanting edge -- "Always shave slanting" -- he would remove such hairs as seemed to him unnecessary. If he caught himself thinking, he would go to a bottle on the washstand and pour out a little bitter water, which he would drink; then, seizing a pair of Indian clubs, he would wave them. "I believe in Indian clubs! " he often said. Tying his tie at the angle he had tied it for nearly thirty years, and placing lavender water -- the only scent he ever used -- about his handkerchief, he would open his wife's door, and say, "How are you, my dear? " Without waiting for an answer he would shut it, and go down.

His correspondence was set out on his writing-table, and as he was not a stupid man he soon disposed of it; then, with his daily paper -- which he had long selected out of every other -- he would stand before the hearth, reading, and believing that the news he read was of a definite importance. He took care that this reading should not stimulate his thoughts. He wanted facts, and the fact that the day's facts were swallowed by the morrow's did not disturb him, for the more facts he read the better he was pleased.