hen his brain refused to
work, were of occasional occurrence to the end. He was very critical of
his own labors, and would bring nothing but the best of his brain to the
art which he so dearly loved--his venerated mistress. But, on the other
hand, the amount of work which he would accomplish at other times was
almost incredible. During a long sojourn at Lausanne he writes: "I have
not been idle since I have been here. I had a good deal to write for
Lord John about the ragged schools; so I set to work and did that. A
good deal to Miss Coutts, in reference to her charitable projects; so I
set to work and did that. Half of the children's New Testament to write,
or pretty nearly. I set to work and did that. Next, I cleared off the
greater part of such correspondence as I had rashly pledged myself to,
and then--began Dombey!"

I know of only one occasion on which he employed an amanuensis, and my
aunt is my authority for the following, concerning this one time: "The
book which your father dictated to me was 'The Child's History of
England.' The reason for my being used in this capacity of secretary was
that 'Bleak House' was being written at the same time, and your father
would dictate to me while walking about the room, as a relief after his
long, sedentary imprisonment. The history was being written for
'Household Words,' and 'Bleak House' also as a serial, so he had both
weekly and monthly work on hand at the same time." The history was
dedicated: "To my own dear children, whom I hope it will help, by-and-by,
to read with interest larger and better books upon the same subject."

My father wrote always with a quill pen and blue ink, and never, I think,
used a lead pencil. His handwriting was considered extremely difficult
to read by many people, but I never found it so. In his manuscripts
there were so many erasures, and such frequent interlineations that a
special staff of compositors was used for his work, but this was not on
account of any illegibility in his handwriting. The manuscripts are most
of them, exhibited at the South Kensington Museum in "the Forster
Collection," and they all show I think, the extreme care and
fastidiousness of the writer, and his ever-constant desire to improve
upon and simplify his original sentence. His objection to the use of a
lead pencil was so great that even his personal memoranda, such as his
lists of guests for dinner parties, the arrangement of tables and menus,
wer