(...)"FOR eleven months and a-half in the year, we, who are busily engaged in professional or commercial pursuits, lead a life of all-exacting labour; and so severe is the discipline -which the standard of business character in this country implies, that the least deviation from the centre of gravity— the slightest abatement of soul-absorbing devotion to the desk, the warehouse, or the till, during "business hours," and "business months," are offences of which few "men of business" would dare to incur the unpardonable guilt. So completely subdued does the nature of the business man appear, that with his stern professional look and his impenetrable commercial panoply, we almost believe him to be transformed into a business machine, and divested of all the weaknesses and sentiments of unsophisticated humanity.
Once in the year, however, nature seems to delight in reasserting her dominion, and as the autumn season approaches uneasy symptoms begin to manifest themselves in the best regulated offices—at first, in a somewhat suppressed and furtive manner, but gradually assuming an overt character— till at length it becomes too plain that we are about to kick ourselves out of harness and to gallop away in a state of fine phrenzy to some "land of the mountain and the flood,"— where, attired in the most wnbusiness-like of costumes(...)".
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