the children; but the children's father was never well there. He had a
succession of colds--as those affections are called; it was ascribed
to the variations of temperature during the summers; but the
temperature would not have troubled him had he not been hard hit
before he went to Berkshire. He got out of patience with the climate,
and was wont to anathematize it with humorous extravagance, as his way
was: "It is horrible. One knows not for ten minutes together whether
he is too cool or too warm. I detest it! I hate Berkshire with my
whole soul. Here, where I had hoped for perfect health, I have for the
first time been made sensible that I cannot with impunity encounter
nature in all her moods." It was the summers that disagreed with him.
"Upon the whole," he said, "I think that the best time for living in
the country is the winter." It was during the winter that he did most
of his writing. The House of the Seven Gables was written between
September of 1850 and January or February of 1851.

But composition took more out of him than formerly. He admitted to
his sister Louisa that he was "a little worn down with constant work,"
and added that he could not afford any idle time now, being evidently
of the opinion that his popularity would be short-lived, and that it
behooved him, therefore, to make the most of it. But "the pen is so
constantly in my fingers that I abominate the sight of it!" he
exclaimed. This was after he had transgressed his custom of never
writing in the hot months. He began in June and finished in forty days
the whole volume of The Wonder-Book. He also read the tales to his
domestic audience as fast as they were written, and benefited,
perhaps, by the expert criticism of the small people. Many passages in
the intercalated chapters, describing the adventures of Eustace Bright
and the Tangle-wood children, are based on facts well known to his own
two youngsters. And when Eustace tells his hearers that if the