mind winked and flapped and rustled like a burnt-out fire; not in a depressed or melancholy way, but phlegmatically and dully.  Well, the spirit bloweth as it listeth; but it is strange to find my mind so unresponsive, with none of that pleasant stir, that excitement that has a sort of fantastic terror about it, such as happens when a book stretches itself dimly and mysteriously before the mind—­when one has a glimpse of a quiet room with people talking, a man riding fiercely on lonely roads, two strolling together in a moonlit garden with the shadows of the cypresses on the turf, and the fragrance of the sleeping flowers blown abroad.  They stop to listen to the nightingale in the bush . . . turn to each other . . . the currents of life are intermingled at the meeting of the lips, the warm shudder at the touch of the floating tress of fragrant hair.  To-day nothing comes to me; I throw it all aside and go to see the children, am greeted delightfully, and join in some pretty and absurd game.  Then dinner comes; and I sit afterwards reading, dropping the book to talk, Maud working in her corner by the fire—­all things moving so tranquilly and easily in this pleasantly ordered home-like house of ours.  It is good to be at home; and how pitiful to be hankering thus for something else to fill the mind, which should obliterate all the beloved things so tenderly provided.  Maud asks about the reception of the latest book, and sparkles with pride at some of the things I tell her.  She sees somehow—­how do women divine these things?—­that there is a little shadow of unrest over me, and she tells me all the comforting things that I dare not say to myself—­that it is only that the book took more out of me than I knew, and that the resting-time is not over yet; but that I shall soon settle down again.  Then I go off to smoke awhile; and then the haunting shadow comes back for a little; till at last I go softly through the sleeping house; and presently lie listening to the quiet breathing of my wife beside me, glad to be at home again, until the thoughts grow blurred, take grotesque shapes, sinking softly into repose.

September 18, 1888.

I have spent most of the morning in clearing up business, and dealing with papers and letters.  Among the accumulations was a big bundle of press-cuttings, all dealing with my last book.  It comes home to me that the book has been a success; it began by slaying its thousands, like Saul, and now it has slain its tens of thousands.  It has brought me hosts of letters, from all sorts of people, some of them very delightful and encouraging, many very pleasant—­just grateful and simple letters of thanks—­some vulgar and impertinent, some strangely intimate.  What is it, I wonder, that makes some people want to tell a writer whom they have never seen all about themselves, their thoughts and histories?  In some cases it is an unaffected desire for sympathy from a person whom they think perceptive and sympathetic;