life before. And the
foolishest part of the whole business is, that I started Osgood to
editing it before I had finished writing it. As a consequence, large
areas of it are condemned here and there and yonder, and I have the
burden of these unfilled gaps harassing me and the thought of the broken
continuity of the work, while I am at the same time trying to build the
last quarter of the book. However, at last I have said with sufficient
positiveness that I will finish the book at no particular date; that I
will not hurry it; that I will not hurry myself; that I will take things
easy and comfortably, write when I choose to write, leave it alone when
I so prefer. The printers must wait, the artists, the canvassers, and
all the rest. I have got everything at a dead standstill, and that is
where it ought to be, and that is where it must remain; to follow any
other policy would be to make the book worse than it already is. I ought
to have finished it before showing to anybody, and then sent it across
the ocean to you to be edited, as usual; for you seem to be a great
many shades happier than you deserve to be, and if I had thought of this
thing earlier, I would have acted upon it and taken the tuck somewhat
out of your joyousness.

In the same mail with your letter, arrived the enclosed from Orme the
motor man. You will observe that he has an office. I will explain that
this is a law office and I think it probably does him as much good to
have a law office without anything to do in it, as it would another
man to have one with an active business attached. You see he is on the
electric light lay now. Going to light the city and allow me to take all
the stock if I want to. And he will manage it free of charge. It never
would occur to this simple soul how much less costly it would be to me,
to hire him on a good salary not to manage it. Do you observe the same
old eagerness, the same old hurry, springing from the fear that if he
does not move with the utmost swiftness, that colossal opportunity
will escape him? Now just fancy this same frantic plunging after vast
opportunities, going on week after week with this same man, during fifty
entire years, and he has not yet learned, in the slightest degree, that
there isn't any occasion to hurry; that his vast opportunity will always
wait; and that whether it waits or flies, he certainly will never catch
it. This immortal hopefulness, fortified by its immortal and unteachable
misjudgme