--Difficulty of using selection in the fulfilment of
literary engagements.

So you have got yourself into that pleasant condition which is about as
agreeable, and as favorable to fruitful study and observation, as the
condition of an over-driven cab-horse!

Very indolent men, who will not work at all unless under the pressure of
immediate urgency, sometimes tell us that they actually like to be
hurried; but although certain kinds of practical work which have become
perfectly easy from habit may be got through at a great pace when the
workman feels that there is an immediate necessity for effort, it is
certainly not true that hurry is favorable to sound study of any kind.
Work which merely runs in a fixed groove may be urged on occasionally at
express speed without any perceptible injury to the quality of it. A
clever violinist can play a passage _prestissimo_ as correctly as if he
played it _adagio_; a banker's clerk can count money very rapidly with
positively less risk of error than if he counted it as you and I do. A
person of sluggish temperament really gains in vivacity when he is
pressed for time, and becomes during those moments of excited energy a
clearer-headed and more able person than he is under ordinary
circumstances. It is therefore not surprising that he should find
himself able to accomplish more under the great stimulus of an immediate
necessity than he is able to do in the dulness of his every-day
existence. Great prodigies of labor have been performed in this way to
avert impending calamity, especially by military officers in critical
times like those of the Sepoy rebellion; and in the obscurer lives of
tradesmen, immense exertions are often made to avert the danger of
bankruptcy, when without the excitement of a serious anxiety of that
kind the tradesman would not feel capable of more than a moderate and
reasonable degree of attention to his affairs. But notwithstanding the
many instances of this kind which might be cited, and the many more
which might easily be collected, the truth remains that the highest
kinds of intellectual labor can hardly ever be properly performed when
the degree of pressure is in the least excessive. You may, for example,
if you have the kind of ability which makes a good journalist, write an
effective leader with your watch lying on the table, and finish it
exactly when the time is up; but if you had the kind of ability which
makes a good poet, you could not write anythi