Stone should again remain too long seated at the bottom of the
Serpentine. Each morning after his cocoa and porridge he could be heard
sweeping out his room with extraordinary vigour, and as ten o'clock came
near anyone who listened would remark a sound of air escaping, as he
moved up and down on his toes in preparation for the labours of the
day. No letters, of course, nor any newspapers disturbed the supreme and
perfect self-containment of this life devoted to Fraternity--no letters,
partly because he lacked a known address, partly because for years he
had not answered them; and with regard to newspapers, once a month he
went to a Public Library, and could be seen with the last four numbers
of two weekly reviews before him, making himself acquainted with the
habits of those days, and moving his lips as though in prayer. At ten
each morning anyone in the corridor outside his room was startled by the
whirr of an alarum clock; perfect silence followed; then rose a sound of
shuffling, whistling, rustling, broken by sharply muttered words; soon
from this turbid lake of sound the articulate, thin fluting of an old
man's voice streamed forth. This, alternating with the squeak of a quill
pen, went on till the alarum clock once more went off. Then he who stood
outside could smell that Mr. Stone would shortly eat; if, stimulated
by that scent, he entered; he might see the author of the "Book of
Universal Brotherhood" with a baked potato in one hand and a cup of
hot milk in the other; on the table, too, the ruined forms of eggs,
tomatoes, oranges, bananas, figs, prunes, cheese, and honeycomb, which
had passed into other forms already, together with a loaf of wholemeal
bread.
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