I felt like the man who undertook to play the violin at a dance for five shillings and a dinner,--the dinner to be paid in advance; but who, when making his bargain, had forgotten that he had never learned a note of music! I had undertaken even to lead the band, and, as it seemed, could not evoke a sound. A horrid idea came upon me that I was struck, as it were, with a sudden idiotcy. My mind had absolutely fled from me. I sat in my arm-chair, looking at the wall, counting the pattern on the paper, and hardly making any real effort to think. All the world seemed at once to have become a blank to me. I went on muttering to myself, “No, the ballot won’t do;” as though there was nothing else but the ballot with which to stir the public mind. On the eighth morning I made a minute and quite correct calculation of the number of words that were demanded of me,--taking the whole as forty-two pages, because of the necessity of recopying,--and I found that about four hours a day would be required for the mere act of writing. The paper was there, and the pen and ink;--but beyond that there was nothing ready. I had thought to rack my brain, but I began to doubt whether I had a brain to rack. Of all those matters of public interest which had hitherto been to me the very salt of my life, I could not remember one which could possibly be converted into twenty-one pages of type. Unconsciously I kept on muttering words about the ballot. “The ballot be ----!” I said, aloud to myself in my agony.