“At a rough kind of fellow⁠—a sort of human hedgehog rolled up,” said Mr. Skimpole, “who is a baker in this neighbourhood and from whom we borrowed a couple of armchairs. We wanted a couple of armchairs, and we hadn’t got them, and therefore of course we looked to a man who had got them, to lend them. Well! This morose person lent them, and we wore them out. When they were worn out, he wanted them back. He had them back. He was contented, you will say. Not at all. He objected to their being worn. I reasoned with him, and pointed out his mistake. I said, ‘Can you, at your time of life, be so headstrong, my friend, as to persist that an armchair is a thing to put upon a shelf and look at? That it is an object to contemplate, to survey from a distance, to consider from a point of sight? Don’t you know