Run your hand over the mahogany desk, and you'll feel nicks and scratches that could only have been etched by a man of letters. The desk smells like him. Over no small number of years, the nibs of his fountain pens have carved a patchwork of grooves where the aroma of sturdy wood has married with the scents of pipe smoke and spilled drink. These chambers are no place for the overly sentimental—there's work to be done and ideas to be committed to paper.
