of Ste.-Beuve's gossip had had a tenth part of the _significance_ of these and their male and female friends, bad readers like myself would never think of growing impatient with him as an old debauchee." A diary entry made by his sister Alice, a few years later says: "In old days, when [William's] eyes were bad, and I used to begin to tell him something which I thought of interest from whatever book I might be reading ... he would invariably say, 'I glanced into that book yesterday and read that.'"[44] He had already formed the habit of making marginal notes, of writing down summaries of his reading, and of formulating his ideas on paper--the admirable practice, in short, of confiding in note-books and addressing himself freely to the waste-basket. For instance: "In 1869, when still a medical student, he began to write an essay showing how almost everyone who speculated about brain processes illicitly interpolated into his account of them links derived from the entirely heterogeneous universe of Feeling. Spencer, Hodgson (in his 'Time and Space'), Maudsley, Lockhart, Clarke, Bain, Dr. Carpenter, and other authors were cited as having been guilty of the confusion. The writing was soon stopped because he perceived that the view which he was upholding against these authors was a pure conception, with no proofs to be adduced of its reality."[45] He kept some of his memoranda in a series of the alphabetized blank-books which used to be sold under the name of "Todd's Index Rerum" during the sixties, and which were devised to facilitate indexing and reference. He continued to make entries in these books until 1890, and perhaps later. He also filled copy-books and pocket note-books, of which a few mutilated but interesting fragments remain. In these he sometimes copied out quotations, sometimes noted comments on his reading, sometimes tried to clothe an idea of his own in precise words. Occasionally he made diary-like entries that show how familiar a companion he was making of the note-book. He was already at his ease in the practice of the Baconian maxim that reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man. A few book-notices or reviews did reach the public. Seven are listed under the years 1868 to 1872 in Professor R. B. Perry's "List of Published Writings." Although the matter of these reviews is seldom of present-day interest, the curious reader will find sentences and paragraphs in them that are prophetic of passages in James's later writings, and will observe that he already commanded a style that expressed the color and quality of his thought.[46] * * * * *