He wrote principally in the morning, with that absorption and regularity which characterize the labor of men who are remembered. When his health began to show signs of giving way, in 1861, it was suggested by a relative, whose intellect, strength of will, and appetite for theories were of equally splendid proportions, that my father only needed a high desk at which to stand when writing, to be restored to all his pristine vigor. With his usual tolerance of possible wisdom he permitted such a desk to be arranged in the tower-study at The Wayside; but with his inexorable contempt for mistakes of judgment he never, after a brief trial, used it for writing. Upon his simple desk of walnut wood, of which he had nothing to complain, although it barely served its purpose, like most of the inexpensive objects about him, was a charming. Italian bronze ink-stand, over whose cover wrestled the infant Hercules in the act of strangling a goose--in friendly aid of "drivers of the quill." My father wrote with a gold pen, and I can hear now, as it seems, the rapid rolling of his chirography over the broad page, as he formed his small, rounded, but irregular letters, when filling his journals, in Italy. He leaned very much on, his left arm while writing, often holding the top of the manuscript book lovingly with his left hand, quite in the attitude of a boy. At the end of a sentence or two he would sometimes unconsciously bow his head, as if bidding good-by to a thought well rid of for the present in its new garb of ink.