The old men of the sea [antikvár]

THE OLD MEN OF THE SEACHAPTER IROMANTIC INCLINATIONSI HAD taken refuge in my club from a cold and gusty evening in early June of the year 19; and I was intending to remain there until it closed, when a man whom I particularly disliked and who was disliked by every one of his fellow-members arrived just before dinner and spoilt my plans. A fundamental weakness of my character is not only an inability to be rude to club bores, but actually, through a kind of cowardly pitifulness, an inability to refrain from going out of my way to be pleasant to them. I knew that I should either have to spend a resentfulevening with X--or from the middle of a clubable groupmake myself wretched with fancying his mortification when left to himself in a corner. I firmly believe in the coolermoments of academic detachment that people like X--are pachydermatous and that their skins can only be pierced by the explosive bullets of such insults as one would most improbably hear in any decent club. I prefer to believe that the lobster does not object to being boiled alive. At the same time, I cannot myself try to wound these pachyderms with even so much as a pin; and I would neither boil a lobster nor see it boiled."Hallo, Marsham! Are. you dining here to-night?" asked the newcomer.