“You need my laziness and carelessness to temper your consuming ambition. You need to alternately get indignant, and laugh, and argue, and double shuffle, if you would avoid the horrors of an early grave. Of course it is not becoming to your station and position to do this, but to wear your dignity always is as bad as being condemned to a dress suit and tight shoes without the possibility of a change. Forgive an old friend for speaking so freely, but I have a real affection for you and I believe that you need this admonition. Your work is killing you, because you are so fierce at it, and don’t let up at all. I know Parsons thinks as I do and in fact you must know it yourself.” Seven years later, in 1879, his wife in a letter to his mother reveals the same habit, and prophesies, alas! too truthfully, the inevitable result. She says: “Will, I believe, will always be busy day and night until he breaks down in health. I think that would be the only thing (except, perhaps, a fortune) which would put a stop to his midnight work. I certainly thought he would be ill after his last strain. He was so weak after remaining in the house so long, and using his brain so continuously, that when the last day came and he was copying his manuscript, he nearly fainted. Only a few more strains like that will be necessary to weaken his constitution seriously.” But not only did he overdraw upon the hours he ought to have spent in sleep. He was always at it while he was awake. He was not a fitful workman, busy by turns, but taking equal turns at idleness. He could not be idle. All times were work-times, the odds-and-ends of the day, the intervals between tasks, the moments of interruption and of waiting, he turned to the most valuable account. Among the drawings which he made for his projected botany he left a memorandum, which shows his incessant watchfulness for subjects of study, and the prompt industry which made him always ready to secure his material. He was always loaded for the game that turned up. And no scantiness of materials or of tools in the least daunted or deterred him. This is his memorandum as he wrote it: _Botany._ “Drawings made in odd moments.” “While waiting for train.” “On back of mule.” “During delay on railroad.” “On envelopes, bills, letters, check-book, on back of books, margins of newspapers, inside of a lozenge-paper, all that was available.” “On top of stage-coach, from overhanging bough while waiting.” “On boats in water; on back of mule.” “While sketching; strolls in park.” “On city fence while waiting for car, yard specimen.” “From specimens dried to shreds.” “From specimens collected in hat or under hat sweat-band.” “On ferry-boat from specimens picked in city yards.”