e was engaged in a critical study of Tennyson, preparatory to
writing an exhaustive book on the life of the great poet. He did not
live to complete the work, but he left it in such shape that a friend
was able to put it in the hands of the publishers.

In the Introduction to the biography this friend told of the courageous
manner in which Professor Lounsbury faced threatening blindness and
continued his writing in spite of the danger. We are told that his eyes,
never very good, failed him for close and prolonged work. "At best he
could depend upon them for no more than two or three hours a day.
Sometimes he could not depend upon them at all. That he might not
subject them to undue strain, he acquired the habit of writing in the
dark. Night after night, using a pencil on coarse paper, he would sketch
a series of paragraphs for consideration in the morning. This was almost
invariably his custom in later years. Needless to say, these rough
drafts are difficult reading for an outsider. Though the lines could be
kept reasonably straight, it was impossible for a man enveloped in
darkness to dot an _i_ or to cross a _t_. Moreover, many words were
abbreviated, and numerous sentences were left half written out. Every
detail, however, was perfectly plain to the author himself. With these
detached slips of paper and voluminous notes before him, he composed on
a typewriter his various chapters, putting the paragraphs in logical
sequence."

Francis Parkman, the historian who made the Indian wars real to
fascinated readers, was a physical wreck on the completion of "The
Oregon Trail," when he was but twenty-five years old. He could not write
even his own name, except with his eyes closed; he was unable to fix his
mind on a subject, except for very brief intervals, and his nervous
system was so exhausted that any effort was a burden. But he would not
give up. During the weary days of darkness he thought out the story of
the conspiracy of Pontiac and decided to write it. Physicians warned him
that the results would be disastrous, yet he felt that nothing could do
him more harm than an idle, purposeless life.

One of his chief difficulties he solved in an ingenious manner. In a
manuscript, published after his death, his plan was described:

"He caused a wooden frame to be constructed of the size and shape of a
sheet of letter paper. Stout wires were fixed horizontally across it,
half an inch apart, movable back of thick pasteboard fi