A man there is, of some renown as a writer, who started a new book early last spring. For some considerable time he had been much discouraged about his writing. Hadn't been able to make it go. Could only lift heavily and painfully one stilted sentence after another. Used to take up now and then one or another of his early books and look into it. Marvelled how it was that he ever could have written such clever stuff. Like Swift when late in life he re-read "Gulliver," so did this man exclaim: "What a genius I had at that time!" He felt that the fire had gone out; his inner life seemed to have completely died; he was a hollow shell; could now neither receive nor impart anything worth half a jews-harp. When, one day, he heard rosy, young Hugh Walpole say of himself that of course what he had written was merely a beginning to what he felt he might do, this man looked at rosy, young Hugh Walpole with a deeply gloomy and very jealous eye. But, lo! as I say, this man started this new book. It began as a series of articles for which he was to be paid--that was _why_ it was begun at all. Now see! With him it was as Professor George Edward Woodberry says of Poe in his admirable "Life"--for a time his genius had "slept." With the start of the new book he awoke. It began to run right out of the ends of his fingers. Took (that book) hold of him completely. He couldn't leave it. Go to bed, have to get up and go at it again. Try to go out for a round of exercise. After a block or so from his quarters, walk slower and slower. Miserable. Tortured. Turn back. Immediately happy again. Soon be back at work. Anybody who entangled him with an invitation anywhere enraged him beyond measure. New book finished. Everything fine. Got another commission. Easy enough job. Set to at it. Empty vessel again! In despair. He'd make all sorts of excuses to himself to leave his place early in the morning to postpone beginning work. He'd go anywhere, with anybody, to keep as long as possible from facing that task again. Couldn't give any sensible explanation of his prolonged delay to the publishers. Kept putting them off again and again, with one cripple-legged excuse after another, in the hope that he'd come round. Matter became a disgrace. Still queerer cases than that I know. Fellow who shared an apartment with me one time. When according to the accepted law of nature his mind should have been in a very bad way, then always was he at his best. After leading a regular, wholesome life for a period his mind would become dull, stale and unprofitable. When, following a very different sort of period, he should in all reason have awakened with a splitting head, a swollen eye and a shaking hand, he would get up at about dawn one morning in rattling fine spirits, his mind as clear as a bell, and with an impassioned desire to work. Could, then, write like a streak. But doesn't William James touch upon such a matter as this somewhere?