"I do not know when the present volume will be finished ready for the printer. But six years have already passed, and, calling this volume done, it would be two years to a volume. About fifteen hundred of your pages make a volume, I believe, and counting three hundred days to the year, would be two and a half pages a day. When you first came, you started off with ten pages, which we all thought rapid, but the outcome makes it exceedingly small. This, with what other work has been done on your volumes, would make every page of your manuscript ready for the printer cost me considerably over two dollars a page." After a denial that this is intended as a complaint about the past, he says: "Go on and do the best you can. I have written equivalent to six volumes during the last six years besides devoting my time to revising and outside matters. But I don't expect any one to work as I do. I am not satisfied with old hands now, however, who do not give me say, four or five pages a day all ready for the printer." According to the printed rules of the library, the hours were from 7.15 sharp to 6 o'clock in the evening, with half an hour for lunch. When we recall the complexity and minuteness of research and thought necessary in historical writing, we must consider three hundred such days a year heavy work. The requirement of an average of a certain number of pages a day was therefore one which would naturally tend to increase the worry of the writer. This requirement was also exacted of Mr. Oak, and we may well conclude that if such pressure were brought to bear on the two most experienced writers in the library, upon the junior writers it must have been intense indeed. The writing of the volume on Colorado, Nevada, and Wyoming, so far as the material at hand permitted, was completed at the end of the year 1885. With all of the precautions taken, however, the pages on Colorado had to be condensed nearly a third to bring them within the space allowed. This was done, as was frequently the case, by throwing matter into fine type and printing as footnotes, instead of making many changes in the manuscript. The system of biographical footnotes as it appears in the history, Mrs. Victor claimed as her contribution to the general plan of the work. The idea was followed with excellent results in her own volumes as well as those written by others, the object being to make biographical mention for the benefit of posterity of every man who took a prominent part in the building of a Pacific state or territory. For carrying out such a purpose, the time of writing during the lives of at least part of the same generation that founded these commonwealths, offered unusually good advantages.