Not even yet have I really written myself out.

I have merely stopped writing because dictating is pleasanter work, and because dictating has given me a strong aversion to the pen, and because two hours of talking per day is enough, and because--But I am only damaging my mind with this digging around in it for pretexts where no pretext is needed, and where the simple truth is for this one time better than any invention, in this small emergency.

I shall never finish my five or six unfinished books, for the reason that by forty years of slavery to the pen I have earned my freedom.

I detest the pen and I wouldn't use it again to sign the death warrant of my dearest enemy.
[_Dictated, March 8, 1906._] For thirty years, I have received an average of a dozen letters a year from strangers who remember me, or whose fathers remember me as boy and young man.

But these letters are almost always disappointing.