Bachelor Jack.
" Cold, wretchedly cold! And what it a fellow going to do with himmelf?" Bachelor Jack. If he only had a wife and half a dozen responsibilities the want of occupation would be the least of bis anxieties.
If Jack had been a man of business there would hare been some help for bis ennui.' He thought he was. But what claim to the same of a business man has he who is silent partner in two or three houses and lets others do the active work P What occupation in receiving in dividends more money than you can really spend ? Jack had not eren the occupation of contriving how to " make both ends meet/ And he was in no small clanger of lapsing into bad habits for the mere waut of employment. -
He h»d even made his will. He had not a hobby. Several had he tried and ridden to death, and just now at the be* ginning of a snow-storm, on a winter's morning, he had the whole day before him. He was too much of a bachelor to be will* ing to get his feet damp.
His room affected the airland the appearance of a literary bachelor, with some young American peculiarities. It wat furnished with a comfortable carpet, chairs, lounges, and fire. There was a suspicion of Lynchburg tobacco in the atmosphere, and piles of books and papers, alternated with meerschaum, brier, wood, Focahontas, and pipes of various form, both of common clay and porcelain. .Walking slicks of various styles, and other bachelor trifles, oecupied'the corners.
Jack whistled, hummed and yawned, pioked up a book and tossed it away from him. There was nothing in the morning papers. There was nothiog in his noddle, except an indefinite idea that he ought to do something. If he bad any kind of an " object," if he had only liked to read with system, as a certain old lady once said, " about worms and beetles and such nasty things," he might hate found indoor occu* pation. He tried a puff, but had already smoked enough. He droned through a bar on his flute, laid the instrument down and yawned fearfully.. Now it began to
(Cbfttiftitfd in Sttpptmtut.) *
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/THS18821209.2.3
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Thames Star, Volume XIII, Issue 4350, 9 December 1882, Page 1
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369Bachelor Jack. Thames Star, Volume XIII, Issue 4350, 9 December 1882, Page 1
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