The office boy was a mere incentive to profanity.

There was no spring in Condy that morning, no elasticity, none of his natural buoyancy.

As the day wore on, his ennui increased; his luncheon at the club was tasteless, tobacco had lost its charm.

He ordered a cocktail in the wine-room, and put it aside with a wry face.
The afternoon was one long tedium.

At every hour he flung his pencil down, utterly unable to formulate the next sentence of his article, and, his hands in his pockets, gazed gloomily out of the window over the wilderness of roofs--grimy, dirty, ugly roofs that spread out below.