They belonged to that very small class of persons who still read, who have mind and leisure to find companionship in books. - George Gissing

Now he was indifferent to all "questions" save that prime solicitude of the human race, how to hold its own against the hostile forces everywhere leagued against it. Life was a perpetual struggle, and, let dreamers say what they might, could never be anything else; he, for one, perceived no right that he had to claim exemption from the doom of labour. Had he felt an impulse to any other kind of work, well and good, he would have turned to it; but nothing whatever called to him with imperative voice save this task of tilling his own acres. It might not always satisfy him; he took no vow of one sole vocation; he had no desire to let his mind rust whilst his hands grew horny. Enough that for the present he had an aim which he saw as a reality.

Do you know anything about Arromanches? A very quiet little spot on the Normandy coast. You get to it by an hour's coach from Bayeux. Not infested by English.

The result will be something unutterably tedious.