one o'clock
I am afraid that as a nation we think rather more of our eating and drinking than is reasonable , and this no doubt explains why so many of us , by the time we are thirty , have lost the original classicality of our contour . Walking in the streets of a town you are almost sure to catch the word _ essen _ in the talk of the passers-by ; and _ das Essen _ , combined , of course , with the drinking made necessary by its exaggerated indulgence , constitutes the chief happiness of the middle and lower classes . Any story-book or novel you take up is full of feeling descriptions of what everybody ate and drank , and there are a great many more meals than kisses ; so that the novel-reader who expects a love-tale , finds with disgust that he is put off with _ menus _ . The upper classes have so many other amusements that _ das Essen _ ceases to be one , and they are as thin as all the rest of the world ; but if the curious wish to see how very largely it fills the lives , or that part of their lives that they reserve for pleasure , of the middle classes , it is a good plan to go to seaside places during the months of July and August , when the schools close , and the _ bourgeoisie _ realises the dream in which it has been indulging the whole year , of hotel life with a tremendous dinner every day at one o'clock . The April baby was a weak little creature in her first years , and the doctor ordered as specially bracing a seaside resort frequented solely by the middle classes , and there for three succeeding years I took her ; and while she rolled on the sands and grew brown and lusty , I was dull , and fell to watching the other tourists . Their time , it appeared , was spent in ruminating over the delights of the meal that was eaten , and in preparing their bodies by gentlest exercise for the delights of the meal that was to come . They passed their mornings on the sands , the women doing fancy work in order that they might look busy , and the men strolling aimlessly about near them with field-glasses , and nautical caps , and long cloaks of a very dreadful pattern reaching to their heels and making them look like large women , called Havelocks , -- all of them waiting with more or less open eagerness for one o'clock , the great moment to which they had been looking forward ever since the day before , to arrive .