of physical infirmity, and not only to win fame but also the happiness which comes from a creative activity. They understood each other very well, and in many points they were much alike both in their friendliness and in their habits of reserve. One little circumstance illustrates this likeness rather curiously. Fond as both of them were of their fellows, and cordial as they both were to all their friends, each wished at times to be alone, and these times were when they walked or rode. Therefore, each morning when the two men mounted their horses or when they set out for a walk, they always parted company when they reached the road, one turning to the right and the other to the left by a tacit understanding, and neither ever thought of accompanying the other. Sometimes a friend not knowing of this trait would join one of them to share the ride or walk. Whenever such a thing as this took place, that particular route would be abandoned the next day and another and a lonelier one selected. A further interruption came from the purchase of a house on Beacon Street and the necessity of arranging to leave the old mansion on Bedford Street. The new house was a fine one, overlooking the Mall and the Common; and the new library, which was planned especially for Prescott's needs, was much more commodious than the old one. But the confusion and feeling of unsettlement attendant on the change distracted Prescott more than it would have done a man less habituated to a self-imposed routine. "A month of pandemonium," he wrote; "an unfurnished house coming to order; a library without books; books without time to open them." It took Prescott quite a while to resume his methodical habits. His old-time indolence settled down upon him, and it was some time before his literary momentum had been recovered. Moreover, he presumed upon the fairly satisfactory condition of his eye and used it to excess. The result was that his optic nerve was badly over-taxed, "probably by manuscript digging," as he said. The strain was one from which his eye never fully recovered; and from this time until the completion of the _Peru_, he could use it in reading for only a few minutes every day, sometimes perhaps for ten or fifteen, but never for more than thirty. As this is the last time that we shall mention this subject, it may be said that for all purposes of literary work Prescott was soon afterward reduced to the position of one who was actually blind. What had before been a merely stationary dimness of vision became a slowly progressive decay of sight, or, to express it in medical language, amblyopia had passed into amaurosis. He followed rigorously his oculist's injunctions, but in the end he had to face the facts unflinchingly; and a little later he recorded his determination to give up all use of the eye for the future in his studies, and to be contented with preserving it for the ordinary purposes of life. The necessity disheartened him.