_May 24._ ...I came home very weary, and lit a fire, and had a delicious two hours all by myself, thinking of the big _étape_ of my life which now lay behind me (I mean that infernal book done), and of the possibilities that the future yielded of reading and living and loving out from the shadow of that interminable black cloud.... At any rate, it does give me some comfort to think that I don't live _wholly_ in projects, aspirations and phrases, but now and then have something done to show for all the fuss. The joke of it is that I, who have always considered myself a thing of glimpses, of discontinuity, of _aperçus_, with no power of doing a big job, suddenly realize at the _end_ of this task that it is the biggest book on psychology in any language except Wundt's, Rosmini's and Daniel Greenleaf Thompson's! Still, if it burns up at the printing-office, I shan't much care, for I shan't ever write it again!! _To Henry James._ CHOCORUA, _June 4, 1890_. MY DEAR HARRY, ...The great event for me is the completion at last of my tedious book. I have been at my desk with it every day since I got back from Europe, and up at four in the morning with it for many a day of the last month. I have written every page four or five times over, and carried it "on my mind" for nine years past, so you may imagine the relief. Besides, I am glad to appear at last as a man who has done something more than make phrases and projects. I will send you a copy, in the fall, I trust, though [the printer] is so inert about starting the proofs that we may not get through till midwinter or later. As "Psychologies" go, it is a good one, but psychology is in such an ante-scientific condition that the whole present generation of them is predestined to become unreadable old medieval lumber, as soon as the first genuine tracks of insight are made. The sooner the better, for me!... _To Mrs. Henry Whitman._ CAMBRIDGE, _July 24, 1890_. MY DEAR MRS. WHITMAN,--How good a way to begin the day, with a letter from you, and a composition of yours to correct!