Jilted! , Volume I by W. Clark Russell

"It has been found hard to describe man by an adequate definition. / Some philosophers have called him a reasonable animal; but others / have considered reason as a quality of which many creatures partake. / He has been termed likewise a laughing animal; but it is said that / some men have never laughed. Perhaps man may be more properly / distinguished as an idle animal. " -- _Dr. Johnson._

My father was a major in the army who, at the time this story begins, / had lived in Longueville-sur-mer for fifteen years, to which place he / had come, after my mother's death, bringing me with him. I was then / seven years old. He put me to a good school in the neighbourhood, / at which I remained until I was sixteen; and was then let free. / Considering myself a man, I worked hard to grow a mustache, in which I / very ignominiously failed; for it was not until I was one-and-twenty / that nature condescended to favour me with that very elegant and / martial decoration. I also took to colouring meerschaum pipes, in which / art, before I was nineteen, I was considered by my companions to excel, / though I did not succeed in establishing my reputation in that line / until I had dealt such an injury to my nervous system as I fear I shall / never recover. I also became, before long, an expert hand at billiards, / though up to the last Bob Le Marchmont could always give me twenty / points and beat me comfortably. But I was his better at whist, and was / indeed a match for several grave old gentlemen who were members of our / English Club in the Rue des Chiens.

My father was a remarkably handsome man, with a nose like Lord / Chatham's and with whiskers which I would liken to two solid bastions / of hair, richly dyed and inexorably curled. A whiter hand than his / never embellished a cuff. He stood six feet in his stockings, and well / do I remember Sub-lieutenant Delplanque saying to me "Mon cher, one may / stitch pokers instead of whalebone into one's stays, and still fail to / achieve the air magnificent and Cesaresque that distinguishes le major / Argrrrarve. " I was once walking on the _port_, as they call the quay, / with my father, when Louis Napoleon drove past us; His Majesty was in / mufti, and my father would not have known him had not the Emperor / deigned to raise his hat. The compliment was an imperial one, and my / father would relate the incident with exquisite satisfaction. Jack / Sturt said "it was foreign majesty paying homage to British arms -- and / legs. " To which I added, "God save the Queen."

There can be no doubt that after I left school my father ought to have / put me to one of the professions, or entered me in a house of business. / He had two brothers, one of whom owned a private bank, the other was a / retired stock-broker; and either of them, as they afterwards told me, / would have been very glad to take me by the hand, had my father applied / to them. But he was by nature a reckless man: by reckless I mean that / he never troubled himself about the future (though he lived strictly / within his half-pay). He hated trouble of any kind or description. / If ever he reflected upon the future, he could scarcely, I am sure, / understand that it should mean more than a perpetual succession of / morning strolls, and afternoon siestas, and evening whist parties. He / pursued day after day, with automatic regularity, a small round of / trifling and monotonous distractions, which by degrees girdled his / existence with the narrowest possible horizon, and prevented him from / sympathising with any needs which, like mine, lay outside the sphere of / his daily routine.

I do not say I was not as much or more to blame. Had I teazed him, / he would no doubt have made an effort to get me out of Longueville / into some calling in England. To speak the truth, I liked my life / so well that I had no wish to change. Monotony has its fascination. / We cling to dulness after many years of habitude. Don't you know / people who have, to your certain knowledge, made up their minds for / the last ten years to leave the place they live in? Year after year / the same story is told -- how they hate the society; how inhospitable / the neighbours are; how low the town has become since their day: how / every stone in every street is as familiar to them as their faces; how / unspeakably nauseating the people who live opposite, and who overlook / all their internal doings, make life by the sickening regularity of / their habits. But your grumbling friends still go on living in the / same place; and all they do, and all they probably ever will do, is to / amuse their resolution to quit with fictitious inspections of houses / they don't mean to take, and occasional applications for lists to / distant house-agents, with whom they have not the slightest intention / of transacting any business. Over and over again I would say, "I'd / give anything to get out of this hole; " and no man's voice more loudly / swelled the residential chorus of abuse against Longueville than mine.