Meanwhile his wife, who entered into all his plans and undertakings with unfailing understanding and high spirit, stood guard over his library door, protected him from interruptions and distractions, managed the household and the children and the family business, helped him to order his day and to see and entertain his friends at convenient times, sped him off on occasional much-needed vacations, and encouraged him to all his major undertakings, with a sustaining skill and cheer which need not be described to anyone who knew his household. To the importance of her companionship it is still, happily, impossible to do justice. If consulted, she would not tolerate even this allusion; yet to gloss over her sustaining influence entirely would be to do injustice to James himself. * * * * * The summer of 1878 was momentous in James's life for another reason. In June, one month before his marriage, he contracted with Messrs. Henry Holt & Company to write a volume on Psychology for the "American Science Series" that they were beginning to publish. He was asked by Mr. Holt, in the course of preliminary correspondence, whether he could deliver the manuscript in a year's time. James replied (June, 1878): "My other engagements and my health both forbid the attempt to execute the work rapidly. Its quality too might then suffer. I don't think I could finish it inside of two years--say the fall of 1880." Thus he proposed to throw the book off rapidly. He doubtless conceived of it in the beginning as a more or less literary survey of the subject as it was then known, and he certainly did not foresee that he was going to devote twelve years of critical study and original research to its preparation. * * * * * Meanwhile, immediately after their marriage, James took his wife to the upper end of Keene Valley in the Adirondacks for the rest of the summer. They both knew and loved the region already. Indeed, although there has been no occasion to mention it before, Keene Valley had already become for James the playground toward which he turned most eagerly when summer came. It never lost its charm for him; he managed to spend a week or two of almost every year there or nearby; and allusions to the region will appear in a number of later letters.