“Paul, you’re talking neo-conventional nonsense again.  Have you ever in your career as a city man stood outside a money-changer’s and looked at the fine collection of genuine banknotes in the window?  Supposing I told you that you could look at them and enjoy the sight of them, and nobody could do more?...  No, my boy, to enjoy a thing properly you’ve got to own it.  And anybody who says the contrary is probably a member of the League of all the Arts.”  He gave another enormous yawn.  “Excuse my yawning, Paul, but this house is a perfect Inferno for me.  The church of St. Nicodemus is hard by, and the church of St. Nicodemus has a striking clock, and the clock strikes all the hours and all the quarters on a half cracked bell or two bells.  If I am asleep every hour wakes me up, and most of the quarters.  The clock strikes not only the hours and the quarters but me.  I regulate my life by that clock.  If I’m beginning to repose at ten minutes to the hour, I say to myself that I must wait till the hour before really beginning, and I do wait.  It is killing me, and nobody can see that it is killing me.  The clock annoys some individuals a little occasionally; they curse, and then go to sleep and stay asleep.  For them the clock is a nuisance; but for me it’s an assassination.  However, I can’t make too much fuss.  Several thousands of people must live within sound of the St. Nicodemus clock; yet the rector has not been murdered nor the church razed to the ground.  Hence the clock doesn’t really upset many people.  And there are hundreds of such infernal clocks in London, and they all survive.  It follows therefore that I am peculiar.  Nobody has a right to be peculiar.  Hence I do not complain.  I suffer.  I’ve tried stuffing my ears with cotton-wool, and stuffing the windows of my bedroom with eiderdowns.  No use.  I’ve tried veronal.  No use either.  The only remedy would be for me to give the house up.  Which would he absurd.  My wife soothes me and says that of course I shall get used to the clock.  I shall never get used to it.  Lately she has ceased even to mention the clock.  My daughter thinks I am becoming a grumbler in my latter years.  My son smiles indifferently.  I admit that my son’s secretary is more sympathetic.  Like most people who are both idle and short of sleep, I usually look very well, spry and wideawake.  My friends remark on my healthy appearance.  You did.  The popular mind cannot conceive that I am merely helplessly waiting for death to put me out of my misery; but so it is.  There must be quite a few others in the same fix as me in London, dying because rectors and other clergymen and officials insist on telling them the time all through the night.  But they suffer in silence as I do.  As I do, they see the uselessness of a fuss.”

“You will get used to it, Arthur,” said Sir Paul indulgently but not unironically, at the end of Mr. Prohack’s disquisition.  “You’re in a nervous state and your judgment’s warped.  Now, I never even heard your famous clock strike ten.”