He loved
order and his mind easily took in statistics. He had invented a wire
kind of dish for utilizing the left-over blobs of soap. He never
received so much as a street-car transfer without reading its entire
face contents. In seven years he had not availed himself of the annual
two weeks' vacation offered him by his firm, and, conspire as he would
against it, Sunday continued to represent to him a hebdomadal vacuity of
morning paper, afternoon nap and walk, unsatisfactory cold supper, and
early to bed. His very capacity for monotony seemed to engender it. He
could sit in Forest Park the whole of a Sunday afternoon, poring over a
chance railroad time-table picked up on the bench; paring his straight,
clean finger nails with a penknife; observing the carriages go by; or
sit beside the lake, watching the skiffs glide about at twenty-five
cents the hour; and finally, hat brim down over his eyes, doze until
twilight seeped damply into his consciousness.
This same unsensitiveness to routine had enhanced his value with
Slocum-Hines from delivery boy at fifteen to second-assistant buyer at
twenty-five, an amenability, however, that threatened to pauperize him
of any capacity for play.
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