I should never write
again. I sent for two or three doctors, announced that I had paresis,
and was told that it was madness for a man who had been as ill as I to
attempt any sort of literary work for weeks, if not months. But the
sense that I absolutely could not write preyed upon me. I used to do a
little each day in spite of their orders, but it is only now that I am
beginning to feel the confusion of ideas lessening, and the ability to
present them coherently growing Even yet I only write disconnected parts
of the chapters I had planned. It is--oh! what is that pet word of
phrenologists? _continuity_, that I have not at my command. I suppose
you cannot quite understand the agony of such an experience, never
having gone through it. Only yesterday I tore up thirty pages of
manuscript, and had more than half a mind to burn the whole thing. It is
only the consideration of the possibly great loss to the literary world
that withholds me, you know," he said with a half bitter laugh, throwing
down the ruins of the flowers he had pulled to pieces with his thin,
nervous hands, and rising.

"But I've been an unconscionable bore, even for a valetudinarian, and I
believe they are privileged to tax people's amiability. I hope I havn't
tired you so that you will forbid my coming again. I will promise not to
talk about myself next time," he said, as he turned to go down the path.

I wondered what his book was like, as I lazily watched him cross the
street in the noonday sun, and then I remembered with a twinge of
conscience that I had hardly written a thousand words since I came. This
soft air, redolent of spicy midsummer odors, seemed to produce an
invincible indolence, even of thought. After the struggles of the past
winter, I was feeling the reaction in utter relaxation of will and
purpose. I wondered, were I in Mr. Longworth's place, would I ever write
again, from the mere love of it? Was the end, even if that end were
success, worth the pain of attaining it? And then, fearing to question
myself further, I went to my room and began to write.

Late July was very beautiful in Wauchittic. From the ocean, a dozen
miles distant, was wafted the faintest suggestion of the odor of the
sea, the wide fields of lush pasture seemed to drink the sun. All night
the murmur of the little stream falling over the mill-dam, filled the
dark hours with soft whispers. The low woods, with their glittering
leaves of the scrub-oak, tempted me, and I d