Staying in a hotel can be a pleasant experience. Some people, anyway, enjoy it.
P. Fellows was not staying in a hotel – he had his own apartment. From this apartment he rarely ventured, and then only for the briefest periods of time. He invited what few friends he had to come visit him at his apartment, and so, dutifully, each would come once or twice a month.
When they arrived he made it a point to be in bed. They would knock and knock and knock and, as had become custom, eventually let themselves in. Hello, they would perfunctorily say, and then await their friend’s salutation.
Come back please, they would faintly discern.
The friend would then walk back to P. Fellows’s bedroom and stand looking with feigned sympathy down at the man in the bed. And how are you today?
Wretched.
Why is that?
The world.
And what is troubling you about the world now?
&c &c.
Finally the friend would feel he had fulfilled his duty (he had no female friends) and would say, always betraying a bit of glee in his voice, Well I really must be getting along now.
P. Fellows inevitably replied Don’t let me keep you, and the friend never failed to honor this command.
Apartments then, like hotels, can be pleasant, though are not necessarily so.
P. Fellows was not staying in a hotel – he had his own apartment. From this apartment he rarely ventured, and then only for the briefest periods of time. He invited what few friends he had to come visit him at his apartment, and so, dutifully, each would come once or twice a month.
When they arrived he made it a point to be in bed. They would knock and knock and knock and, as had become custom, eventually let themselves in. Hello, they would perfunctorily say, and then await their friend’s salutation.
Come back please, they would faintly discern.
The friend would then walk back to P. Fellows’s bedroom and stand looking with feigned sympathy down at the man in the bed. And how are you today?
Wretched.
Why is that?
The world.
And what is troubling you about the world now?
&c &c.
Finally the friend would feel he had fulfilled his duty (he had no female friends) and would say, always betraying a bit of glee in his voice, Well I really must be getting along now.
P. Fellows inevitably replied Don’t let me keep you, and the friend never failed to honor this command.
Apartments then, like hotels, can be pleasant, though are not necessarily so.
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