It has often happened that I have commenced a business letter in the usual formal way, gradually to lose sight of its object in a crowd of superfluous details. Worse still, if the matter in hand be delicate or wearisome, my impatience is not slow to assert itself by remarks and reproaches so pointed and violent that my only course on reperusal of the letter is to tear it up. By way of precaution, therefore, O. has adopted the plan of having all his correspondence re-read by his colleague. Strangely enough, to his actual caligraphy no exception can be taken. The firmness of the characters, the accuracy of the punctuation and accentuation, the straightness of the lines, are as good as in any commercial handwriting. With the aggravation of his head tics writing has become a serious affair. Every conceivable attitude has been essayed in turn, and at present the device he favours is to sit across a chair and rest his chin or his nose on the back; in this fashion he can write all that is required. O.'s every act is characterised by extreme impatience. In his hurry he comes into collision with surrounding objects or breaks what he is carrying in his hand, not because of defective vision or inco-ordination of movement, but because of his eagerness to be done. In spite of the fact that I know my recklessness to be absurd, that I see well enough the obstacles around and the danger of an encounter, I am conscious of a paradoxical impulse to do exactly what I should not do. In the same instant of time I want what I do not want. As I pass through a door I knock against the door-post without fail, for the sole reason that I would avoid it. There is impatience in his speech. His volubility makes him out short his own phrases or break in upon the conversation of others. If an idea suggests itself, he must give it expression. Perhaps the word wedded to the idea is not at once forthcoming, yet he does not hesitate to invent a neologism, which is often amusing in spite of or because of its oddness, and if it please him he will enter it in his vocabulary and use it in preference to the other. To wait is foreign to his nature. The least delay at table exasperates him; any order he gives must be executed instanter; no sooner has he set out than he would be at his journey's end. An obstruction or difficulty in the way is the signal for a fresh outburst; his irritation soon exceeds all bounds; his language degenerates into brutality, his gestures become increasingly violent and menacing. It is not with any surprise, then, that we learn in O.'s case of incipient homicidal and suicidal ideas. At times when my tics were in full force evil thoughts have often surged over me, and on two or three occasions I have picked up a revolver, but reason fortunately has come to the rescue.