[BNP/E3, 13A – 25-26]

The office of my friend Mr. Williams was placed at the end of a stone-flagged passage, up into which a flight of steps led from the street. The street itself was one of these link-ways of two main city-paths, where traffic is by comparison small. Yet even here, in this thoroughfare, there were shops, traffic, crowds and the turmoil of existence. But suppose that in summer you decided to enter my friend’s office {…}

_______

Now and again a cat would come into the office — an old, black brute that rubbed itself against[1] your nerves, and went near you whenever you walked, always getting between your legs and tripping and hindering your progress. It was the laziest, most worthless animal that I have ever seen, but, as it was emotionally, part of that office, I had a sort of liking for it, excepting when it rubbed against me.

_______

But now everything is changed.

[26^r]

In the corner opposite the door stood the table of old Williams, the clerk. A painstaking old man was he — a kindly and a good old man. I think that I see him now, with his slow, dreamy step, stooping and work-worn, coming slowly up the passage, carefully taking the plug out of the key, opening the door and as carefully putting the key on the inside. His age I never could know, but he seemed to me to have lived for ever. To have eternity[2] with good face.

The office of my dear friend Taylor was not like any other office. When you stepped from the street into the stone-flagged passage, you felt a change in yourself; when you walked into the office, you were not the same. High words, rage, laughter were never heard in that room. You could smile, you could weep, you could speak in a low, soft voice, but not the hardest of you could break the softness of that divine atmosphere.

       My friend’s office was one of those places where real heat never comes. The idol, neglected thermometer in the far coroner never registered at temperature above sixty-seven, on the Fahrenheit scale. To speak truly, now that I consider, this means nothing for the old thermometer never registered any other temperature at all.

[26a^r]

That office itself was in the middle of a large, noisy town; the atmosphere of that room was not in any way of any place. The time phantom of time and space faded into nothing there; they disappeared. The atmosphere of that office was out of time and out of space. It was like the air of no other room that I knew.

       You were disconsoled, unhappy; you walked into the office of my dear friend Williams and your care and your unhappiness were you.

The seclusion of that office (more imaginary perhaps than real) was marvellous. It seemed to be, by some {…} decree, cut off from time and from space. There was upon it, illogically, irrationally, unconsideredly, an eternity in finite things.

[BNP/E3, 13A – 26^v]

I despise and hate the being who can go up a staircase step by step. He may be, for all I know, a very moral, clever gentleman; nevertheless, I shall positively assert that no man of real genius ever could move in such a way.

_______

I need hardly speak of the perniciousness of such an idea. It amounts, neither more nor less, to inducing us to heat good and evil as indifferent and thus establishes a system of epicureanism and carelessness as despicable as it is stupid.

_______

It does not.

Charles Robert Anon

On the wall which, when you entered, was on the left side of the door, an old bookcase leaned. Upon it stood an old bell, without a clapper to ring it. If you looked at the shelves you might see some law books, old, and fast blackened by the dust. But there were also other volumes, on the upper shelf, leaning against one another, for they did not fill the space which they had. You might see an old edition of Virgil, a Horace of date unknown, half a volume of the letters of Cicero, and, last of all, with one corner off, the last volume leaning against the others, the revealed title-page half-turned to the view, an edition of Tibullus, curâ C. G. Heyne, cum notis editorum, Lipsiae, eighteen-five.

[1] against ^{/in spite of\}

[2] eternity ^{/indefiniteness\}