something for the new venture, and he was fond of recalling the author's
misgivings concerning his contributions, which later repeated themselves
with too much reason, though not with the reason that was in his own
mind.




V.

He lived twenty-five years after that self-question at sixty, and after
eighty he continued to prove that threescore was not the limit of a man's
intellectual activity or literary charm. During all that time the work
he did in mere quantity was the work that a man in the prime of life
might well have been vain of doing, and it was of a quality not less
surprising. If I asked him with any sort of fair notice I could rely
upon him always for something for the January number, and throughout the
year I could count upon him for those occasional pieces in which he so
easily excelled all former writers of occasional verse, and which he
liked to keep from the newspapers for the magazine. He had a pride in
his promptness with copy, and you could always trust his promise. The
printer's toe never galled the author's kibe in his case; he wished to
have an early proof, which he corrected fastidiously, but not overmuch,
and he did not keep it long. He had really done all his work in the
manuscript, which came print-perfect and beautifully clear from his pen,
in that flowing, graceful hand which to the last kept a suggestion of the
pleasure he must have had in it. Like all wise contributors, he was not
only patient, but very glad of all the queries and challenges that
proof-reader and editor could accumulate on the margin of his proofs, and
when they were both altogether wrong he was still grateful. In one of