_P.S._—Be it known to this fluent generation that I R. L. S., in the
forty-third of my age and the twentieth of my professional life, wrote
twenty-four pages in twenty-one days, working from six to eleven, and
again in the afternoon from two to four or so, without fail or
interruption. Such are the gifts the gods have endowed us withal: such
was the facility of this prolific writer!