"I wrote a great deal; I wrote late at night. I was always thinking on
the subject, walking about, wherever I was, everywhere. It thoroughly
infected me. You are to remember that all the material ideas connected
with it were more or less of the beautiful, the subject itself
delightfully interesting, and I, then, without a care."

He sighed heavily.

"I believe, that every one who sets about writing in earnest does his
work, as a friend of mine phrased it, _on_ something--tea, or coffee, or
tobacco. I suppose there is a material waste that must be hourly
supplied in such occupations, or that we should grow too abstracted, and
the mind, as it were, pass out of the body, unless it were reminded
often enough of the connection by actual sensation. At all events, I
felt the want, and I supplied it. Tea was my companion--at first the
ordinary black tea, made in the usual way, not too strong: but I drank a
good deal, and increased its strength as I went on. I never experienced
an uncomfortable symptom from it. I began to take a little green tea. I
found the effect pleasanter, it cleared and intensified the power of
thought so, I had come to take it frequently, but not stronger than one
might take it for pleasure. I wrote a great deal out here, it was so
quiet, and in this room. I used to sit up very late, and it became a
habit with me to sip my tea--green tea--every now and then as my work
proceeded. I had a little kettle on my table, that swung over a lamp,
and made tea two or three times between eleven o'clock and two or three
in the morning, my hours of going to bed. I used to go into town every
day. I was not a monk, and, although I spent an hour or two in a
library, hunting up authorities and looking out lights upon my theme, I
was in no morbid state as far as I can judge. I met my friends pretty