'
If another cried out--'The coffee is coming immediately.'--'Yes,' he
would retort, 'and so is the next hour: and, by the way, it's about
that length of time that I have waited for it.' Then he would collect
himself with a stoical air, and say--'Well, one can die after all: it
is but dying; and in the next world, thank God! there is no drinking of
coffee, and consequently no--waiting for it.' Sometimes he would rise
from his chair, open the door, and cry out with a feeble querulousness
--'Coffee! coffee!' And when at length he heard the servant's step upon
the stairs, he would turn round to us, and, as joyfully as ever sailor
from the mast-head, he would call out--'Land, land! my dear friends, I
see land.'
This general decline in Kant's powers, active and passive, gradually
brought about a revolution in his habits of life. Heretofore, as I have
already mentioned, he went to bed at ten, and rose a little before
five. The latter practice he still observed, but not the other. In 1802
he retired as early as nine, and afterwards still earlier. He found
himself so much refreshed by this addition to his rest, that at first
he was disposed to utter a _Euraeka_, as over some great discovery
in the art of restoring exhausted nature: but afterwards, on pushing it
still farther, he did not find the success answer his expectations.
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