Now in my time I have possessed and even studied that
work; but if I were to be left to-morrow on Juan Fernandez, Hoppus's
is not the book that I should choose for my companion volume.
I tried to fight the point with Mackay. I made him own that he had
taken pleasure in reading books otherwise, to his view,
insignificant; but he was too wary to advance a step beyond the
admission. It was in vain for me to argue that here was pleasure
ready-made and running from the spring, whereas his ploughs and
butter-churns were but means and mechanisms to give men the necessary
food and leisure before they start upon the search for pleasure; he
jibbed and ran away from such conclusions. The thing was different,
he declared, and nothing was serviceable but what had to do with
food. 'Eat, eat, eat!' he cried; 'that's the bottom and the top.'
By an odd irony of circumstance, he grew so much interested in this
discussion that he let the hour slip by unnoticed and had to go
without his tea. He had enough sense and humour, indeed he had no
lack of either, to have chuckled over this himself in private; and
even to me he referred to it with the shadow of a smile.
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