Wyandot County Republican. [volume] (Upper Sandusky, Ohio) 1869-1903, 1872-06-13
Hobbs and His Hobby.
IoBBs' hobby is early rising.

hObbS uODDy Is carly IlSlHS.
We believe in early rising at our
wealthy and wise" we get up every
punctually at half-past eight,
unless it rains. When it rains
we lie in bed till half-past nine. Because
the less one sees of a rainy day the better.
| would not get up at all when it rains If
it were not for the necessity of having
three meals a day.
Hobbs gets up at five o'clock in clear
and four o'clock in cloudy weather. He
says you must get up earlier in cloudy
weather in order to get the mean amount
of light needed every day for the health
of the body. told him that i thought 1t
must be mean amount of light that he
got at four o'clock in the morning.
think he gets up at three in the winter, so
as to get fairly warmed up by four. 1t
must be for that reason. Or it may be
that he gets up at three in order to get
mean amount of darkness. The days be-
ing short, Hobbs lengthens them by rising
betimes, or rather before times.
Hobbs rides his hobby.
Hobbs wants everybody else to ride.
have always noticed that when a man
has one poor little mean scrub of a hobby
he always wants to make it carry all man.
kind. He wants to put all the world on
thO NAOuP- AAODDS SNeo up
fore must get up early; therefore you,
therefore Brown, Jones, Robinson, and
the rest, must get up early. Hobbs is like
an evil conscience, the enemy of sleep.
If / stay at his house, he will, on
some pretext, order breakfast half an
hour earlier than usual; then he will get
up and ring the rising bell himself, to be
sure that it is done thoroughly; namely,
in every hall, on every stairway, with
short pause before the door of each
sleeper. For myself, / scarcely sleep at
all when have occasion to spend night
under the roof-tree of my friend Hobbs.
have so keen a consciousness that am
to be walked up, such feeling of haste to
condense my sleep into the few hours al
lowed me, such sense of the total moral
wickedness of any comfortable sleep from
Hobbs standpoint, that / can not sleep.
If do chance to catch cat nap, the
ghost OF the Using bell rings in my dreams
and impresses me with the fearful respon-
sibility incur in sleeping at all. Gen.
orally get about worn-out by morning,
and in that desperate mood in which 1
don't care for rising-bells or anything
else, sink exhausted into defiant slum-
Der, which may last an hour, but which
is so totally unconscious that there seems
to be no time between the moment of get
ed, high-keved, torturing, demonical,
frantic rising bell that wanders in a will
o'-the-wisp fashion through the halls and
stairways, and stops at last night afront
my door, and assumes a vixenish, per-
sonal, insulting tone as it attacks the first
comfortable sleep have had, and arouses
me to the necessity for early rising.
The worst thing about the old friend
ship existing between our family and the
Hobbses is that every visit pay to Hobbs
is returned in kind. He never sits an
evening out. He begins to yawn imme-
diately after supper and says-ah that
to get up early one only wants to 60 to
bed early. Then he quotes "the dumb
brutes as examples" and l suppose if
Darwinism is ever established, we shall
have him talking about returning to the
good old ways of the days when our an
cestors lived in the tree-tops, We must
get up early because the birds do, says
Hobbs. Why not scratch a great deal,
theu, because monkeys do? 1t must be
healthy, else nature would not have in
spired these simple hearted children of
the forest with the desire. Let us intro
duce again the "back-scratchers " which
ladies carried with their fans few hun
dred years ago.
But all reason and all badinage are lost
on Hobbs He only smiles in a sort of
sublime superiority. We must excuse
him. He will retire. What time do we
have breakfast he asks with look at
his watch, and his watch is his familiar
spirit. His inspiring muse is a watch,
his chastising fury is a rising-bell. We
state our breakfast-time half an hour ear
lier than usual, because we are ashamed
to state it truthfully, and we mean to get
up earlier tomorrow. He smiles with an
irresistible sense of the righteousness of
anybody lying in bed so late. Hopes we
won't hurry ON his account, though he
says it with the look of a martyr. He
saws he wonders that we are not all dead.
CWe would be il he were a regular
boarder.)
In the morning he is up early, in order
to get the mean amount of light needed
He is tramping up and down the hall in
front of my door. l have sense of duty
in the matter, and feel that / must get
up. For Hobbs is making as much noise
as possible in the bathroom. He goes
up and down stairs like restless evil
spirit, only there is no evil spirit that ever
had so much squeak leather" in his
boots. He unbolts the front door and
goes out, and then comes back and slams IL
OF course get up, and am greeted with
'sUp at last, ehI" and plying smile from
this superior being, who prides himself
on having maintained the primitive habits
of his monkey ancestors.
But there must be an end of all things,
and Hobbs leaves. Then / get frantic
with delight and order breakfast delayed
an hour the next morning. And next
morning keep waking up from my cosy,
half-conscious slumber, the topping-off of
the night, best of all, because you know
YOU are getting ii, as heard lady say
Il keep waking out of this slumber and
chucklinp to myself that "Hobbs has
ponew and falling eff again and again into
the paradise of unlimited repose. Then
get up with my nerves all smoothed and
placid. and do more work in an hour than
Hobbs can do in day, giving him four
morning hours the start.
Bishop Whitehouse has been blamed
for many things, but there is current in
Illinois a saying of his that should be i'm
mortal. He says that people should not
rise until the world has had a good airing.
Hobbs talks about the glory of sunrise,
and am very sensible to the scene. be-
cause it is so rare With Hobbs sunrise
must be a vulgar everyday affair.
And what is that golden sentence of
Beecher's, that all great workers are great
resters?
Is Hobbs ''healthy, wealthy and wise?
No, think not. He has weakness In
his chest, and he falls asleep in his chair,
and he is not rich; and as for wisdom, he
has not sense enough to lie abed when he
gets there. He does not know when he's
well of. HIS first wife died of rising
bells and the second one is insane. All
from getting the mean quantity OF light.
TIE LEIsURELY SAUNTERER-
S.-I forgot to say that Hobbs, like
all other early risers, takes nap in the
middle of the day. think he only gets
up to torment other people.-Hedrta and
Home.
A CLERK in the English admiralty Of
flee lately had his pay suspended for
twenty-eight days for addressing TO the
first lord of that august board some sug-
pestions in regard to iron shipbuilding.