Let the reader spare me, and let me spare the reader any description of what we both of us felt.

When we were in the study, my father said, “My dearest boy, get pen and paper and take notes of what I tell you.  It will be all disjointed; one day I shall remember this, and another that, but there will not be many more days on which I shall remember anything at all.  I cannot write a coherent page.  You, when I am gone, can piece what I tell you together, and tell it as I should have told it if I had been still sound.  But do not publish it yet; it might do harm to those dear good people.  Take the notes now, and arrange them the sooner the better, for you may want to ask me questions, and I shall not be here much longer.  Let publishing wait till you are confident that publication can do no harm; and above all, say nothing to betray the whereabouts of Erewhon, beyond admitting (which I fear I have already done) that it is in the Southern hemisphere.”

These instructions I have religiously obeyed.  For the first days after his return, my father had few attacks of loss of memory, and I was in hopes that his former health of mind would return when he found himself in his old surroundings.  During these days he poured forth the story of his adventures so fast, that if I had not had a fancy for acquiring shorthand, I should not have been able to keep pace with him.  I repeatedly urged him not to overtax his strength, but he was oppressed by the fear that if he did not speak at once, he might never be able to tell me all he had to say; I had, therefore, to submit, though seeing plainly enough that he was only hastening the complete paralysis which he so greatly feared.

Sometimes his narrative would be coherent for pages together, and he could answer any questions without hesitation; at others, he was now here and now there, and if I tried to keep him to the order of events he would say that he had forgotten intermediate incidents, but that they would probably come back to him, and I should perhaps be able to put them in their proper places.

After about ten days he seemed satisfied that I had got all the facts, and that with the help of the pamphlets which he had brought with him I should be able to make out a connected story.  “Remember,” he said, “that I thought I was quite well so long as I was in Erewhon, and do not let me appear as anything else.”

When he had fully delivered himself, he seemed easier in his mind, but before a month had passed he became completely paralysed, and though he lingered till the beginning of June, he was seldom more than dimly conscious of what was going on around him.

His death robbed me of one who had been a very kind and upright elder brother rather than a father; and so strongly have I felt his influence still present, living and working, as I believe for better within me, that I did not hesitate to copy the epitaph which he saw in the Musical Bank at Fairmead, {1} and to have it inscribed on the very simple monument which he desired should alone mark his grave.