near Kensington) "seems to have stifled and darkened my invention." It
was not until the autumn of the following year he saw his way to a
beginning. "The Christmas number has come round again" (30th of August
1863)--"it seems only yesterday that I did the last--but I am full of
notions besides for the new twenty numbers. When I can clear the
Christmas stone out of the road, I think I can dash into it on the
grander journey." He persevered through much difficulty; which he
described six weeks later, with characteristic glance at his own ways
when writing, in a letter from the office of his journal. "I came here
last night, to evade my usual day in the week--in fact to shirk it--and
get back to Gad's for five or six consecutive days. My reason is, that I
am exceedingly anxious to begin my book. I am bent upon getting to work
at it. I want to prepare it for the spring; but I am determined not to
begin to publish with less than five numbers done. I see my opening
perfectly, with the one main line on which the story is to turn; and if
I don't strike while the iron (meaning myself) is hot, I shall drift off
again, and have to go through all this uneasiness once more."

He had written, after four months, very nearly three numbers, when upon
a necessary rearrangement of his chapters he had to hit upon a new
subject for one of them. "While I was considering" (25th of February)
"what it should be, Marcus,[272] who has done an excellent cover, came
to tell me of an extraordinary trade he had found out, through one of
his painting requirements. I immediately went with him to Saint Giles's
to look at the place, and found--what you will see." It was the
establishment of Mr. Venus, preserver of animals and birds, and
articulator of human bones; and it took the place of the last chapter of
No. 2, which was then transferred to the end of No. 3. But a start with
three full numbers done, though more than enough to satisfy the hardest
self-conditions formerly, did not satisfy him now. With his previous
thought given to the story, with his Memoranda to help him, with the
people he had in hand to work it with, and ready as he still was to turn
his untiring observation to instant use on its behalf, he now moved,
with the old large canvas before him, somewhat slowly and painfully. "If
I were to lose" (29th of March) "a page of the five numbers I have
proposed to myself to be ready by the publication day, I should feel
that I had fallen short.