And these thoughts came over my mind so often, that at last, in utter despair, I flung down the pen.

Whereupon the tempter within me said--"And, now you have flung down the pen, you may as well fling yourself out of the window; what remains for you to do ?" Why, to take it up again, thought I to myself, for I did not like the latter suggestion at all--and then forthwith I resumed the pen, and wrote with greater vigour than before, from about six o'clock in the evening until I could hardly see, when I rested for awhile, when the tempter within me again said, or appeared to say--"All you have been writing is stuff, it will never do--a drug--a mere drug:" and methought these last words were uttered in the gruff tones of the big publisher.

"A thing merely to be sneered at," a voice like that of Taggart added; and then I seemed to hear a sternutation,--as I probably did, for, recovering from a kind of swoon, I found myself shivering with cold.

The next day I brought my work to a conclusion.
But the task of revision still remained; for an hour or two I shrank from it, and remained gazing stupidly at the pile of paper which I had written over.

I was all but exhausted, and I dreaded, on inspecting the sheets, to find them full of absurdities which I had paid no regard to in the furor of composition.