warmth of affection, but he was still taciturn. "I will begin to tell
you about it," he said, "after breakfast. Where is your dear mother? How
was it that I have . . . "

Then of a sudden his memory returned, and he burst into tears.

I now saw, to my horror, that his mind was gone. When he recovered, he
said: "It has all come back again, but at times now I am a blank, and
every week am more and more so. I daresay I shall be sensible now for
several hours. We will go into the study after breakfast, and I will
talk to you as long as I can do so."

Let the reader spare me, and let me spare the reader any description of
what we both of us felt.

When we were in the study, my father said, "My dearest boy, get pen and
paper and take notes of what I tell you. It will be all disjointed; one
day I shall remember this, and another that, but there will not be many
more days on which I shall remember anything at all. I cannot write a
coherent page. You, when I am gone, can piece what I tell you together,
and tell it as I should have told it if I had been still sound. But do
not publish it yet; it might do harm to those dear good people. Take the
notes now, and arrange them the sooner the better, for you may want to
ask me questions, and I shall not be here much longer. Let publishing
wait till you are confident that publication can do no harm; and above
all, say nothing to betray the whereabouts of Erewhon, beyond admitting
(which I fear I have already done) that it is in the Southern
hemisphere."

These instructions I have religiously obeyed. For the first days after