Anyway, they can stand in their present order until--after
lunch.

A sign of his youth was the fact that to the day of his death
he had denied himself the luxury and slothfulness of habits.
I have never seen him smoke automatically as most men do. He
had too much respect for his own powers of enjoyment and for
the sensibilities, perhaps, of the best Havana tobacco. At a
time of his own deliberate choosing, often after many hours of
hankering and renunciation, he smoked his cigar. He smoked it
with delight, with a sense of being rewarded, and he used all
the smoke there was in it.

He dearly loved the best food, the best champagne, and
the best Scotch whiskey. But these things were friends to
him, and not enemies. He had toward food and drink the
Continental attitude; namely, that quality is far more
important than quantity; and he got his exhilaration from the
fact that he was drinking champagne and not from the
champagne. Perhaps I shall do well to say that on questions
of right and wrong he had a will of iron. All his life he
moved resolutely in whichever direction his conscience
pointed; and, although that ever present and never obtrusive
conscience of his made mistakes of judgment now and then, as
must all consciences, I think it can never once have tricked
him into any action that was impure or unclean. Some critics
maintain that the heroes and heroines of his books are
impossibly pure and innocent young people. R. H. D. never
called upon his characters for any trait of virtue, or
renunciation, or self-mastery of which his own life could not