So I reasoned with myself beside the little holy church, not far from the moving stream.

But the time warned me to be going.  The thunder had drawn off to the west; a faint breeze stirred and whispered in the elms.  The day declined.  But I had had my moment, and my heart was full; for it is such moments as these that are the pure gold of life, when the scene and the mood move together to some sweet goal in perfect unison.  Sometimes the scene is there without the mood, or the mood comes and finds no fitting pasturage; but to-day, both were mine; and the thought, echoing like a strain of rich sad music, passed beyond the elms, beyond the blue hills, back to its mysterious home. . . .

There, that is the end of my sketch; a little worked up, but substantially true.  Tell me if you like the kind of thing; if you do, it is rather a pleasure to write thus occasionally.  But it may seem to you to be affected, and, in that case, I won’t send you any more of such reveries.

You seem very happy and prosperous; but then you like heat, and enjoy it like a lizard.  My love to all of you.—­Ever yours,

T. B.

Upton,
July 1, 1904.

Dear Herbert,—­What you say about forming habits is very interesting.  It is quite true that one gets very little done without a certain method; and it is equally true that, if one does manage to arrive at a certain definite programme for one’s life and work, it is very easy to get a big task done.  Just reflect on this fact; it would not be difficult, in any life, to so arrange things that one could write a short passage every day, say enough to fill a page of an ordinary octavo.  Well, if one stuck to it, that would mean that in the course of a year one would have a volume finished.  Sometimes my colleagues express surprise that I can find time for so much literary work; and on the other hand if I tell them how much time I am able to devote to it they are equally surprised that I can get anything done, because it seems so little.  This is the fact; I can get an hour—­possibly two—­on Tuesday, two hours on Thursday, one on Friday, two on Saturday, and one or two on Sunday--nine hours a week under favourable circumstances, and never a moment more.  But writing being to me the purest pleasure and refreshment, I never lose a minute in getting to work, and I use every moment of the time.  That does not include reading; but by dint of having books about, and by working carefully, so that I do not need to go over the same ground twice, I get through a good deal in the week.  I have trained myself, too, to be able to write at full speed when I am at work, and I can count on writing three octavo pages in an hour, or even four.  The result is, as you will see, that in a term of twelve weeks, I can turn out between three and four hundred pages.  The curious thing is that I do better original work in the term-time than in the holidays.  I think the pressure of a good deal of mechanical work, not of an exhausting kind, clears the brain and makes it vigorous.  Of course it is rather scrappy work; but I lay my plans in the holidays, make my skeleton, and work up my authorities; and so I can go ahead at full steam.