my cap for a lady who seemed in every way qualified to look after an
only son as he should be looked after from a mother's point of view,
and I declare to you I had a wretchedly close call of it. My poor
mother, thinking it was quite settled, sailed for America, leaving me
entirely unprotected, whereupon I succeeded in making my escape. Heaven
knows I had no desperate longing to visit Palestine at that particular
time, but I journeyed thither without a qualm of regret, and thereby
avoided the surrender without love or honour.

For the past year I have done little or no work. My books are few and
far between, so few in fact that more than once I have felt the sting
of dilettantism inflicting my labours with more or less increasing
sharpness. It is not for me to say that I despise a fortune, but I am
constrained to remark that I believe poverty would have been a fairer
friend to me. At any rate I now pamper myself to an unreasonable extent.
For one thing, I feel that I cannot work,--much less think,--when
opposed by distracting conditions such as women, tea, disputes over
luggage, and things of that sort. They subdue all the romantic
tendencies I am so parsimonious about wasting. My best work is done
when the madding crowd is far from me. Hence I seek out remote, obscure
places when I feel the plot boiling, and grind away for dear life with
nothing to distract me save an unconquerable habit acquired very early
in life which urges me to eat three meals a day and to sleep nine hours
out of twenty-four.

A month ago, in Vienna, I felt the plot breaking out on me, very much
as the measles do, at a most inopportune time for everybody concerned,
and my secretary, more wide-awake than you'd imagine by looking at
him, urged me to coddle the muse while she was willing and not to put
her off till an evil day, as frequently I am in the habit of doing.