things performed to like things produce like results. I'll swear
that machine never did the same thing in the same way twice.
Again and again it demonstrated that unlike actions produce like
results.

How my back used to ache with it! Prior to that experience, my
back had been good for every violent strain put upon it in a none
too gentle career. But that typewriter proved to me that I had a
pipe-stem for a back. Also, it made me doubt my shoulders. They
ached as with rheumatism after every bout. The keys of that
machine had to be hit so hard that to one outside the house it
sounded like distant thunder or some one breaking up the
furniture. I had to hit the keys so hard that I strained my first
fingers to the elbows, while the ends of my fingers were blisters
burst and blistered again. Had it been my machine I'd have
operated it with a carpenter's hammer.

The worst of it was that I was actually typing my manuscripts at
the same time I was trying to master that machine. It was a feat
of physical endurance and a brain storm combined to type a
thousand words, and I was composing thousands of words every day
which just had to be typed for the waiting editors.

Oh, between the writing and the typewriting I was well a-weary. I
had brain and nerve fag, and body fag as well, and yet the thought
of drink never suggested itself. I was living too high to stand
in need of an anodyne. All my waking hours, except those with
that infernal typewriter, were spent in a creative heaven. And
along with this I had no desire for drink because I still believed
in many things--in the love of all men and women in the matter of