Idleness was a thousand times better in this case than industry against the grain.

Idleness was only time lost; and the next day, it may be, was as promising as ever.

It was merely a day perished from the calendar.

But a passage written feebly, flatly, and in a wrong spirit, constituted an obstacle that it was next to impossible to correct and set right again.

I wrote therefore by starts; sometimes for a week or ten days not a line.