Excerpt from Breakfast, Luncheon and Tea I should be indeed flattered could I believe that you hail with as much pleasure as I do the renewal of the "Common-Sense Talks," to which I first invited you four years ago. For I have much to say to you in the same free-masonic, free-and-easy strain in which you indulged me then. It is a wild March night. Winter and Summer, Spring-time and Autumn, the wind sings, or plains at my sitting-room window. To-night its shout is less fierce than jocund to my ear, for it says, between the Castanet passages of hail and sleet, that neither friend nor bore will interrupt our conference. Shutters and curtains are closed; the room is still, bright, and warm, and we are no longer strangers. The poorest man of my acquaintance counts his money by the million, has a superb mansion he calls "home," a wife and beautiful children who call him "husband" and "father." He has friends by the score, and admirers by the hundred, for human nature has not abated one jot in prudential sycophancy since the Psalmist summed up a volume of satirical truth in the pretended "aside" - "and men will praise thee when thou doest well unto thyself." About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.