g, days of
correspondence, days upon days at my desk writing--these days crowded
with interesting incident, curious surprises, amusing talk, hours of
hope, hours of black despair--in their own way days of discovery and
adventure. But in this case again the tale has been told and I am not so
foolish as to sit down and tell it anew, sorely as I may be tempted.
Anybody who reads further will find that the principal truth my nights
have revealed to me is that the man who is interested--really
interested--in something, does not want to talk, and often cannot think,
about anything else. But it does not follow that he can make sure of
listeners as keen to hear about it. The writer may, in his enthusiasm,
write the same book twice, but even if it prove a "best-seller" the
first time, he runs a risk the second of seeing it disposed of as a
remainder.

IV

So it has been throughout my working life: my day's task has had no
other object than to get itself chronicled in print. If _what_ the work
was that filled my day is not known, it could not interest anybody were
I to write about it now. If _how_ I worked during all those long hours
is to me an all-absorbing subject and edifying spectacle, I am not so
vain as not to realize that I must be the only person to find it so.
Most men--and women too--were brought into the world to work, but most
of them would be so willing to shirk the obligation that the best they
ask is to be allowed to forget their own labours while they can, and not
to be bothered with a report of other people's. By nature I am inclined
to Charles Lamb's belief that a man--or a woman--cannot have too little
to do and too much time to do it in. But necessity having forced me to
give over my days to work, it happens that I, personally, would from
sheer force of habit find days without it a bore. However, I would not,
for that reason, argue that work is its own reward to any save the
genius, or that methods of work are of importance to any save the
workman who employs them.

Whatever man's endurance may be, I know one weak woman whose powers of
work are limited. There was never anybody to regulate my day of work
save myself, since I am glad to say it has not been my lot to waste the
golden years of my life in an office, and I am not the stern task-master
or tiresome trade-unionist who insists upon so many hours and so much
work in them, and will make not an inch of allowance either more or
less. Sometimes my hou