"I cannot sit and think," he said. Tired
with exercise, he went to bed early, except when friends supped with him;
and he always rose early, from necessity, being obliged to attend at his
office, in Leadenhall Street, every day, from ten until four o'clock--
sometimes later. It was there that his familiar letters were written. On
his return, after a humble meal, he strolled (if it was summer) into the
suburbs, or traversed the streets where the old bookshops were to be
found. He seldom or never gave dinners. You were admitted at all times to
his plain supper, which was sufficiently good when any visitor came; at
other times, it was spare. "We have _tried_ to eat suppers," Miss Lamb
writes to Mrs. Hazlitt, "but we left our appetites behind us; and the dry
loaf, which offended you, now comes in at night unaccompanied." You were
sure of a welcome at his house; sure of easy, unfettered talk. After
supper you might smoke a pipe with your host, or gossip (upon any subject)
with him or his sensible sister.
Perhaps the pipe was the only thing in which Lamb really exceeded. He was
fond of it from the very early years when he was accustomed to smoke
"Orinooko" at the "Salutation and Cat," with Coleridge, in 1796.
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