On Everything
peopled quiet which supports the nights of inch living in London—all these had become a sort of food to him; they greatly pleased him. So also did the physical food of London. He took an increasing pleasure in changing the choice of his wine, which (an invariable effect of age) he now distinguished. His rooms in London had thus become for now some years past more and more his home: but he had begun to feel that rooms could not be a home; and he would set up for himself; he would be a master. He would feel again and in a greater way that comfortable consciousness of self and of surroundings fitting one which a man has in early youth every time he enters his father's house.
With this purpose the man of whom I speak looked at several houses, going first to agents, but finding himself disappointed in all. He soon learned a wiser way, which was to ask friends of what houses they had heard, and then to see for himself whether he liked them, and to do this before even he knew what rent was asked. Also he would wander up and down the streets, his heavy, well-dressed figure ponderous and moving at a measured pace, and as he so wandered he would cast his eyes over houses.
London, like all great things, has about it a quality for which I do not know the word, but when I was at school there was a Greek word for it. "Manifold" is too vague; "multitudinous" would not explain the idea at all. What I mean is a quality by which one thing contains several (not many) parts,
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