you couldn't find it."

He was likely to begin the morning with some such incident which perhaps
he did not think worth while to include in his dictations, and sometimes
he interrupted his dictations to relate something aside, or to outline
some plan or scheme which his thought had suggested.

Once, when he was telling of a magazine he had proposed to start, the
Back Number, which was, to contain reprints of exciting events from
history--newspaper gleanings--eye-witness narrations, which he said
never lost their freshness of interest--he suddenly interrupted himself
to propose that we start such a magazine in the near future--he to be
its publisher and I its editor. I think I assented, and the dictation
proceeded, but the scheme disappeared permanently.

He usually had a number of clippings or slips among the many books on
the bed beside him from which he proposed to dictate each day, but
he seldom could find the one most needed. Once, after a feverishly
impatient search for a few moments, he invited Miss Hobby to leave the
room temporarily, so, as he said, that he might swear. He got up and we
began to explore the bed, his profanity increasing amazingly with each
moment. It was an enormously large bed, and he began to disparage the
size of it.

"One could lose a dog in this bed," he declared.

Finally I suggested that he turn over the clipping which he had in his
hand. He did so, and it proved to be the one he wanted. Its discovery
was followed by a period of explosions, only half suppressed as to
volume. Then he said:

"There ought to be a room in this house to swear in. It's dangerous to
have to repress an emotion like that."

A moment later, when Miss Hobby returned, he was serene and happy again.
He was usually gentle during the dictations, and patient with those
around him--remarkably so, I thought, as a rule. But there were moments
that involved risk. He had requested me to interrupt his dictation
at any time that I found him repeating or contradicting himself, or
misstating some fact known to me. At first I hesitated to do this, and
cautiously mentioned the matter when he had finished. Then he was likely
to say:

"Why didn't you stop me? Why did you let me go on making a jackass of
myself when you could have saved me?"

So then I used to take the risk of getting struck by lightning, and
nearly always stopped him at the time. But if it happened that I upset
his thought the thunderbolt was apt to fly.