Just as he is solving this problem upon principles of the highest morality,
it occurs to him suddenly that he has not written his Saturday article;
and that there is only about an hour to do it in. He wildly calls to
somebody (probably the gardener) to telephone to somewhere for a messenger;
he barricades himself in another room and tears his hair, wondering what
on earth he shall write about. A drumming of fists on the door outside
and a cheerful bellowing encourage and clarify his thoughts; and he is
able to observe some newspapers and circulars in wrappers lying on the
table. One is a dingy book catalogue; the second is a shiny pamphlet
about petrol; the third is a paper called The Christian Commonwealth. He
opens it anyhow, and sees in the middle of a page a sentence with which he
honestly disagrees. It says that the sense of beauty in Nature is a new
thing, hardly felt before Wordsworth. A stream of images and pictures
pour through his head, like skies chasing each other or forests running by.
"Not felt before Wordsworth!" he thinks. "Oh, but this won't do...
bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang...night's candles are
burnt out... glowed with living sapphires. leaving their moon-loved
maze...antique roots fantastic... antique roots wreathed high...what is
it in As You Like It?"

He sits down desperately; the messenger rings at the bell; the children
drum on the door; the servants run up from time to time to say the
messenger is getting bored; and the pencil staggers along, making the
world a present of fifteen hundred unimportant words, and making
Shakespeare a present of a portion of Gray's Elegy; putting "fantastic
roots wreathed high" instead of "antique roots peep out." Then the
journalist sends off his copy and turns his attention to the enigma of
whether a brother should commandeer a sister's necklace because the sister
pinched him at Littlehampton. That is the first scene; that is how an
article is really written.