e precious, for they revealed character as nothing else
could; but as material for history they often failed to stand the test of
the documents in the next room--the letters, notebooks, agreements, and
the like--from which I was gradually rebuilding the structure of the
years.

In the talks that we usually had when the dictations were ended and the
stenographer had gone I got much that was of great value. It was then
that I usually made those inquiries which we had planned in the
beginning, and his answers, coming quickly and without reflection, gave
imagination less play. Sometimes he would touch some point of special
interest and walk up and down, philosophizing, or commenting upon things
in general, in a manner not always complimentary to humanity and its
progress.

I seldom asked him a question during the dictation--or interrupted in any
way, though he had asked me to stop him when I found him repeating or
contradicting himself, or misstating some fact known to me. At first I
lacked the courage to point out a mistake at the moment, and cautiously
mentioned the matter when he had finished. Then he would be likely to
say:

"Why didn't you stop me? Why did you let me go on making a donkey
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 in 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 was sorry and apologized, and in a moment the sky was
clear again. There was generally a humorous complexion to the
dictations, whatever the subject. Humor was his natural breath of life,
and rarely absent.

Perhaps I should have said sooner that he smoked continuously during the
dictations. His cigars were of that delicious fragrance which belongs to
domestic tobacco. They were strong and inexpensive, and it was only his
early training that made him prefer them. Admiring friends used to send
him costly, imported cigars, but he rarely touched them, and they were
smoked by visitors. He often smoked a pipe, and preferred it to be old
and violent. Once when he had bought a new, expensive briar-root, he
handed it to me, saying:

"I'd like to have you smoke that a year or two, and when it gets so you
can't stand it, maybe it will suit me."

LXI.

DICTATIONS AT DUBLIN, N. H.

Following his birthday dinner, Mark