k of speed in composition, for whereas, on April 29th, he wrote
his sister that he had written only one chapter and intended to devote
"the next three weeks to getting this work fairly under way," by the
7th of June he announced that the book was "nearly finished."

"Some days," Sewall related afterward, "he would write all day long;
some days only a part of the day, just as he felt. He said sometimes
he would get so he could not write. Sometimes he could not tell when
a thing sounded right. Then he would take his gun and saunter off,
sometimes alone, sometimes with me or Dow, if he was around."

Occasionally he would "try out" a passage on Sewall. "Bill," he
exclaimed one morning, "I am going to commit the unpardonable sin and
make you sit down and listen to something I've written."

Bill was willing. The passage was from the first chapter of the
biography of the Tennessee statesman and dealt with the attitude of
the frontier toward law and order and the rights of "the other
fellow." Bill gave his approval and the passage stood.

Day after day Roosevelt pushed forward into his subject, writing with
zest, tempered by cool judgment. He did not permit an occasional trip
to Medora to interrupt his work. He had a room over Joe Ferris's
store, and after Joe and his wife had gone to bed, he would throw open
the doors of the kitchen and the dining-room and walk to and fro
hammering out his sentences.

"Every once in a while," said Joe later, "everything would be quiet,
then after fifteen minutes or so he would walk again as though he was
walkin' for wages."

Mrs. Ferris, who had a maternal regard for his welfare, was always
careful to see that a pitcher of milk was in his room before the
night's labors commenced; for Roosevelt had a way of working into the
small hours. "The eight-hour law," he remarked to Lodge, "does not
apply to cowboys"; nor, he might have added, to writers endeavoring
to raise the wherewithal to pay for a hunting trip to the Coeur
d'Alenes in the autumn.

I wonder if your friendship will stand a very serious strain
[he wrote Lodge, early in June]. I have pretty nearly
finished Benton, mainly evolving him from my inner
consciousness; but when he leaves the Senate in 1850 I have
nothing whatever to go by; and, being by nature both a
timid, and, on occasions, by choice a truthful, man, I would
prefer to have some foundation of fact, no matter how
slender, on wh