covet,
is to live in peace, and die in my bed.

I wonder why I did not commence authorship before! How true it is that a
man never knows what he can do until he tries! The fact is, I never thought
that I could make a novel; and I was thirty years old before I stumbled on
the fact. What a pity!

Writing a book reminds me very much of making a passage across the
Atlantic. At one moment, when the ideas flow, you have the wind aft, and
away you scud, with a flowing sheet, and a rapidity which delights you: at
other times, when your spirit flags, and you gnaw your pen (I have lately
used iron pens, for I'm a devil of a crib-biter), it is like unto a foul
wind, tack and tack, requiring a long time to get on a short distance. But
still you do go, although but slowly; and in both cases we must take the
foul wind with the fair. If a ship were to furl her sails until the wind
was again favourable, her voyage would be protracted to an indefinite time;
and if an author were to wait until he again felt in a humour, it would
take a life to write a novel.

Whenever the wind is foul, which it now most certainly is, for I am writing
anything but "Newton Forster," and which will account for this rambling,
stupid chapter, made up of odds and ends, strung together like what we call
"skewer pieces" on board of a man-of-war; when the wind is foul, as I said
before, I have, however, a way of going a-head by getting up the steam,
which I am now about to resort to--and the fuel is brandy. All on this side
of the world are asleep, except gamblers, house-breakers, the new police,
and authors. My wife is in the arms of Morpheus--an allegorical _crim.
con._, which we husbands are obliged to wink at; and I am making love to
the brandy-bottle, that I may stimulate my ideas, as unwilling to be roused
from their dark cells of the brain as the spirit summoned by Lochiel, who
implored at each response, "Leave, oh! leave me to repose."

Now I'll invoke them, conjure them up, like little imps, to do my
bidding:--

By this glass which now I drain,
By this spirit, which shall cheer you,
As its fumes mount to my brain,
From thy torpid slumbers rear you.

By this head, so tired with thinking,
By this hand, no longer trembling,
By these lips, so fond of drinking,
Let me feel that you're assembling.

By the bottle placed before me,
(Food for you, ere morrow's sun),
By this second glass, I pour me,
Come, you _little