Truth is, I was not without increasing doubts of my own. Doubts I had not allowed to rise to the surface of my mind and disturb my plans. Polk’s letter brought them into the open. I had read everything available. I had been over the ground between the Maryland line, South Mountain, Carlisle and the haven until I could draw a detail map from memory. I had turned up diaries, letters and accounts which had not only never been published, but which were not known to exist until I hunted them down. I had so steeped myself in the period I was writing about that sometimes the two worlds seemed interchangeable and I could live partly in one, partly in the other. Yet with all this, I was not sure I had the whole story, even in the sense of wholeness that historians, knowing they can never collect every detail, accept. I was not sure I had the grand scene in perfectly proper perspective. I admitted to myself the possibility that I had perhaps been too rash, too precipitate, in undertaking _Chancellorsville to the End_ so soon. I knew the shadowy sign, the one which says in effect, _You are ready_, had not been given. My confidence was shaken. Was the fault in me, in my temperament and character, rather than in my preparation and use of materials? Was I drawing back from committing myself, from acting, from doing? That I had written the first volume was no positive answer, for it was but the fraction of a whole deed; if I withdrew now I could still preserve my standing as an onlooker. But not to act was itself an action and answered neither Dr Polk nor myself. Besides, what could I do? The entire work was contracted for. The second volume was promised for delivery some eighteen months hence. My notes for it were complete; this was no question of revising, but of wholly re-examining, revaluing and probably discarding them for an entirely new start. It was a job so much bigger than the original, one so discouraging, I felt I couldnt face it. It would be corrupt to produce a work lacking absolute conviction and cowardly to produce none. Catty responded to my awkward recapitulation in a way at once heartening and strange. “Hodge,” she said, “youre changing and developing, and for the better, even though I love you as you were. Don’t be afraid to put the book aside for a year—ten years if you have to. You must do it so it will satisfy yourself; never mind what the publishers or the public say. But Hodge, you mustnt, in your anxiety, or your foolish fear of passiveness, you mustnt try any shortcuts. Promise me that.” “I don’t know what youre talking about, Catty dear. There are no shortcuts in writing history.” She looked at me thoughtfully. “Remember that, Hodge. Oh, remember it.” _17._ _HX-1_