He loved his art more than his time,
more than his ease, and could thrust into the flames an armful of
manuscript because he suspected the pages of weakness and
exaggeration.
One of his methods of avoiding failure was to be rigorous in the care
of his daily existence. A preponderance of frivolous interruption to a
modicum of thorough labor at thinking was a system utterly foreign to
him. He would not talk with a fool; as a usual thing he would not
entertain a bore. If thrown with these common pests, he tried, I
think, to study them. And they report that he did so very silently.
But he did not waste his time, either by politely chattering with
people whom he meant to sneer at after they had turned their backs, or
in indulgences of loafing of all sorts which leave a narcotic
stupidity in their wake. He had plenty of time, therefore, for
thought, and he could think while walking either in the fresh air, or
back and forth in his study. Men of success detest inactivity. It is
a hardship for them to be as if dead for a single moment. So, when my
father could not walk out-of doors during meditation, he moved back
and forth in his room, sturdily alert, his hands clasped behind him,
quietly thinking, his head either bent forward or suddenly lifted
upward with a light in his gray eyes.
He wrote principally in the morning, with that absorption and
regularity which characterize the labor of men who are remembered.
When his health began to show signs of giving way, in 1861, it was
suggested by a relative, whose intellect, strength of will, and
appetite for theories were of equally splendid proportions, that my
father only needed a high desk at which to stand when writing, to be
restored to all his pristine vigor.
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