as memory or fancy prompted, without any particular biographical order.  It was his purpose, he declared, that his dictations should not be published until he had been dead a hundred years or more—­a prospect which seemed to give him an especial gratification.—­[As early as October, 1900, he had proposed to Harper & Brothers a contract for publishing his personal memoirs at the expiration of one hundred years from date; and letters covering the details were exchanged with Mr. Rogers.  The document, however, was not completed.]

He wished to pay the stenographer, and to own these memoranda, he said, allowing me free access to them for any material I might find valuable.  I could also suggest subjects for dictation, and ask particulars of any special episode or period.  I believe this covered the whole arrangement, which did not require more than five minutes, and we set to work without further prologue.

I ought to state that he was in bed when we arrived, and that he remained there during almost all of these earlier dictations, clad in a handsome silk dressing-gown of rich Persian pattern, propped against great snowy pillows.  He loved this loose luxury and ease, and found it conducive to thought.  On the little table beside him, where lay his cigars, papers, pipes, and various knickknacks, shone a reading-lamp, making more brilliant the rich coloring of his complexion and the gleam of his shining hair.  There was daylight, too, but it was north light, and the winter days were dull.  Also the walls of the room were a deep, unreflecting red, and his eyes were getting old.  The outlines of that vast bed blending into the luxuriant background, the whole focusing to the striking central figure, remain in my mind to-day—­a picture of classic value.

He dictated that morning some matters connected with the history of the Comstock mine; then he drifted back to his childhood, returning again to the more modern period, and closed, I think, with some comments on current affairs.  It was absorbingly interesting; his quaint, unhurried fashion of speech, the unconscious movement of his hands, the play of his features as his fancies and phrases passed in mental review and were accepted or waved aside.  We were watching one of the great literary creators of his time in the very process of his architecture.  We constituted about the most select audience in the world enjoying what was, likely enough, its most remarkable entertainment.  When he turned at last and inquired the time we were all amazed that two hours and more had slipped away.

“And how much I have enjoyed it!” he said.  “It is the ideal plan for this kind of work.  Narrative writing is always disappointing.  The moment you pick up a pen you begin to lose the spontaneity of the personal relation, which contains the very essence of interest.  With shorthand dictation one can talk as if he were at his own dinner-table —­always a most inspiring place.  I expect to dictate all the rest of my life, if you good people are willing to come and listen to it.”