A Houyhnhnm's Scrapbook/Number 1/Harlan's Hobby

One day when Mr. Harlan tossed his hat
as usual onto the sofa
(he’d just come home from work and always
resorted to this gesture to
relax his office feeling) he heard a thud.
“Well,” he said, as intrigue got
the better of perplexity, “Well now,
if I can drop my head like that
I wonder how far this can go.” This said,
he straightway clicked his arms and legs off,
and peeling his body as one might peel
an onion, stripped completely. Then
(he’d had experience building bottled ships)
he spent the early evening on
his reassembly. One night one month later,
as Harlan sat late tinkering
with parts, his daughter Ellie came home looped,
and she saw it all and screamed
and ran to bed. The next morning, when Ellie
hugged him and bussed him and dubbed him
the Sweetest Daddy, he didn’t fail
to lecture her on nasty parties.

There was a change, no doubt. “A mellow stroll
through middle-age,” the grocer says
to ladies wondering. The office girls
conjecture he must be religious.
But I, as his physician, know the case,
and feel that his serenity
depends in part on hobby fun and more
on rest. For Harlan has the habit
of being naked when he goes to bed
and so sleeps enviably sound.