DEAR JAMES,--I am quite satisfied with what has been done as to the London bills. I am glad the presses move. I have been interrupted sadly since my return by tourist gazers. This day a confounded pair of Cambridge boys have robbed me of two good hours, and you of a sheet of copy--though whether a good sheet or no, deponent saith not. The story is a dismal one, and I doubt sometimes whether it will bear working out to much length after all. Query, if I shall make it so effective in two volumes as my mother does in her quarter of an hour's crack by the fireside? But _nil desperandum_. You shall have a bunch to-morrow or next day--and when the proofs come in, my pen must and shall step out. By the bye, I want a supply of pens--and ditto of ink. Adieu for the present, for I must go over to Toftfield, to give orders _anent_ the dam and the footpath, and see _item_ as to what should be done _anent_ steps at the Rhymer's Waterfall, which I think may be made to turn out a decent bit of a linn, as would set True Thomas his worth and dignity. Ever yours, W. S. {p.274} It must, I think, be allowed that these careless scraps, when combined, give a curious picture of the man who was brooding over the first chapters of The Bride of Lammermoor. One of his visitors of that month was Mr. R. Cadell, who was of course in all the secrets of the house of Constable; and observing how his host was harassed with lion-hunters, and what a number of hours he spent daily in the company of his work-people, he expressed, during one of their walks, his wonder that Scott should ever be able to write books at all while in the country. "I know," he said, "that you contrive to get a few hours in your own room, and that may do for the mere pen-work; but when is it that you think?" "Oh," said Scott, "I lie _simmering_ over things for an hour or so before I get up--and there's the time I am dressing to overhaul my half-sleeping, half-waking _projet de chapitre_--and when I get the paper before me, it commonly runs off pretty easily.--Besides, I often take a doze in the plantations, and while Tom marks out a dyke or a drain as I have directed, one's fancy may be running its ain riggs in some other world."