to leave the room
temporarily, so, as he said, that he might swear. He got up and we began
to explore the bed, his profanity increasing amazingly with each moment.
It was an enormously large bed, and he began to disparage the size of it.

"One could lose a dog in this bed," he declared.

Finally I suggested that he turn over the clipping which he had in his
hand. He did so, and it proved to be the one he wanted. Its discovery
was followed by a period of explosions, only half suppressed as to
volume. Then he said:

"There ought to be a room in this house to swear in. It's dangerous to
have to repress an emotion like that."

A moment later, when Miss Hobby returned, he was serene and happy again.
He was usually gentle during the dictations, and patient with those
around him--remarkably so, I thought, as a rule. But there were moments
that involved risk. He had requested me to interrupt his dictation at
any time that I found him repeating or contradicting himself, or
misstating some fact known to me. At first I hesitated to do this, and
cautiously mentioned the matter when he had finished. Then he was likely
to say:

"Why didn't you stop me? Why did you let me go on making a jackass of
myself when you could have saved me?"

So then I used to take the risk of getting struck by lightning, and
nearly always stopped him at the time. But if it happened that I upset
his thought the thunderbolt was apt to fly. He would say:

"Now you've knocked everything out of my head."

Then, of course, I would apologize and say I was sorry, which would
rectify matters, though half an hour later it might happen again. I
became lightning-proof at last; also I learned better to select the
psychological moment for the correction.

There was a humorous complexion to the dictations which perhaps I have
not conveyed to the reader at all; humor was his natural breath and life,
and was not wholly absent in his most somber intervals.

But poetry was there as well. His presence was full of it: the grandeur
of his figure; the grace of his movement; the music of his measured
speech. Sometimes there were long pauses when he was wandering in
distant valleys of thought and did not speak at all. At such times he
had a habit of folding and refolding the sleeve of his dressing-gown
around his wrist, regarding it intently, as it seemed. His hands were so
fair and shapely; the palms and finger-tips as pink as those of a child.
Then when he spoke he wa