In June of 1883 he offers a manuscript which, he says, he has been meditating for seventeen years. In that case he must have begun to think of it at eighteen. This, if one begins to consider, is by no means improbable. On the contrary, I think it is extremely probable, and that Jefferies meant his words to be taken literally. The thoughts of a boy are long thoughts. Sometimes one remembers, by some strange trick of memory--it shows how the past never dies, but may be recalled at any moment--a train of thought which filled the mind on some day long passed away, when one was a lad of eighteen; a child; almost an infant. At such a moment one is astonished to remember that this thought filled the brain so early. As for the age of adolescence, there is no time when the brain is more active to question, to imagine, to create, to inform; none, when the mind is more eager to arrive at certainty; none, more hopeful of the future; none, more anxious to arrive at the truth. Therefore, when Jefferies tells Mr. Longman that he has meditated "The Story of My Heart" for eighteen years, I believe him: not that he then consciously called the work by that or by any other name, but that the book is the outcome of so long a period of thought and questioning. "It is," he says, "a real record--unsparing to myself as to all things--absolutely and unflinchingly true." The book was published with Longman's autumn list in October, 1883. I have something to say about it in another chapter. Jefferies' industry at this time seems superhuman. The MS. of "The Story of My Heart" is no sooner out of his hands, than he asks Mr. Longman if he will look at another. This time it is his "Red Deer," which I really believe to be the very best book of the kind ever produced. This is what he says himself about it: "The title is 'Red Deer,' and it is a minute account of the natural history of the wild deer of Exmoor, and of the modes of hunting them. I went all over Exmoor a short time since on foot in order to see the deer for myself, and in addition I had the advantage of getting full information from the huntsman himself, and from others who have watched the deer for twenty years past. The chase of the wild stag is a bit out of the life of the fifteenth century brought down to our own times. Nothing has ever interested me so much, and I contemplate going down again. In addition, there are a number of Somerset poaching tricks which were explained to me by gamekeepers and by a landowner there, besides a few curious superstitions. There seem to be no books about the deer--I mean the wild deer. A book called 'Collyer's Chase of the Wild Red Deer' was published many years ago, but is not now to be had." "Red Deer" was brought out by Longmans in 1884.