It took me such a long time to write an answer at all to my satisfaction, that I don’t know what the ticket-porter can have thought, unless he thought I was learning to write. I must have written half-a-dozen answers at least. I began one, ‘How can I ever hope, my dear Agnes, to efface from your remembrance the disgusting impression’ — there I didn’t like it, and then I tore it up.

I began another, ‘Shakespeare has observed, my dear Agnes, how strange it is that a man should put an enemy into his mouth’ — that reminded me of Markham, and it got no farther. I even tried poetry. I began one note, in a six-syllable line, ‘Oh, do not remember’ — but that associated itself with the fifth of November, and became an absurdity. After many attempts,