The Solitary Breakfast – 1917 and 2007

1917

At first blush breakfast seems a sociable meal; at that hour a man is best satisfied, or least discontented, with himself, and in a mood to make the most of the world. Human vitality at its maximum, mere existence lugs exhilaration along with it; good humor mantles everything. But there is an uncertainty in company even when you may choose it; for temperament is never to be wholly trusted (artists are dangerous people to meet at breakfast), and there are a thousand happenings — troubled sleep, early awakening, mosquitoes, a surmised mouse, no hot water, buttoned boots, putting studs in a shirt — that may occur between going to bed at night and coming down to breakfast in the morning, and ill-adjusted feelings in even one member of the company may dampen the spirits of all. Company is no doubt the better state, and brings out the full capacities for pleasure that lie in breakfast, but a solitary breakfast is safer; solitary pleasantness is more tempered, but it is more certain. — Henry Dwight Sedgwick in Yale Review.

2007 (me)

There's always some 'feeling out' in the morning, which only takes a few seconds, to see if the company you keep has gotten up on the wrong side of the bed. By the time you actually get to breakfast, though, you definitely know. Anyway, who has time for breakfast, and who really cares to have company doing it? Out in public, seeing the various ones having their breakfast, it's like any other time. Among the billed cap set, I don't notice any distinguishing between a quiet few bites and the same old uproar of any other time. When I get up my eyes are somewhat sleep-shot, but some of these others, you'd never know they needed it.

As for the "surmised mouse," I suppose that means something. Which would be this, he hears some noise, real low level noise, chewing on a box maybe, or scampering, and surmises it's a mouse in the house. I tell you, if I surmised there were a mouse nearby, my surmising would soon become complete knowledge, and the mouse would be hunted down and extracted from the premises as soon as I had the energy to do so, which would necessarily be at that same precise moment.