After all, the thing was an experiment. I had time to spare; if the
experiment failed, a year's delay would not necessarily be a year's
loss.

I am ensconced, then, at Mr. Trevanion's; I have been there some months.
It is late in the winter; Parliament and the season have commenced. I
work hard,--Heaven knows, harder than I should have worked at college.
Take a day for sample.

Trevanion gets up at eight o'clock, and in all--weathers rides an hour
before breakfast; at nine he takes that meal in his wife's dressing-
room; at half-past nine he comes into his study. By that time he
expects to find done by his secretary the work I am about to describe.

On coming home,--or rather before going to bed, which is usually after
three o'clock,--it is Mr. Trevanion's habit to leave on the table of the
said study a list of directions for the secretary. The following, which
I take at random from many I have preserved, may show their multifarious
nature:--

1. Look out in the Reports (Committee, House of Lords) for the last
seven years all that is said about the growth of flax; mark the
passages for me.

2. Do, do. "Irish Emigration."

3. Hunt out second volume of Kames's "History of Man," passage
containing Reid's Logic,--don't know where the book is!

4. How does the line beginning Lumina conjurent, inter something,