Explore "The Wish" by Hermann Sudermann on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
In the old doctor's bedroom a cheerful fire was flickering. He himself / still lay a-bed, quite penetrated by the delightful sensation of a man / who knows his life's work is completed. When one has been sitting half / a century through, for twelve long hours every day, in the rumbling / conveyance of a country doctor, thumped and bumped along over stones / and lumps of clay, one may now and again lie in bed till daylight, / especially when one knows one's work is safe in younger hands.
He stretched and straightened his stiff old limbs, and once more buried / in the pillows his weather-beaten, yellowish-grey face, covered with / white stubble like granite with Iceland moss. But habit, that austere / mistress, who had for so many years driven him forth from his bed / before dawn, whether it was necessary or not, would not let him rest / even now.