Washington ? After 18 years in a city he loved to hate, Justice David H. Souter can finally bid Washington farewell.

For each of those years, Souter worked seven days a week through most of the Supreme Court’s October-to-July terms, staying at his office for more than 12 hours a day. His lunch most often consisted of yogurt and an apple eaten at his desk; his supper a quickly prepared late-night meal at the apartment he rented a few miles from work.

He once told acquaintances he had “the world’s best job in the world’s worst city.”

A history buff renowned among friends and former clerks as an excellent storyteller with a wonderful sense of humor, Souter headed for his native New Hampshire as soon as he could at the end of the court’s term every year.

Souter was appointed to the court in 1990 by President George H.W. Bush after just a few months as a federal appeals court judge, but with many years experience as a prosecutor, attorney general, trial judge and state Supreme Court justice in New Hampshire.

Virtually unknown outside his home state, he was viewed warily both by liberals and conservatives. Eighteen years later, Souter was firmly among the court’s liberals.

Souter was the nation’s 105th justice; only its sixth bachelor.