Good Company for Every Day in the Year (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1866 edition. Excerpt: ...as in everything, he required punctuality; but he noted tardiness only by looking significantly at his watch; for it is the testimony of all his surviving secretaries, that he never spoke a severe word to either of them in the many years of their familiar intercourse. When they had met in the study, there was no thought but of active work for about three hours. His infirmities, however, were always present to warn him how cautiously it must be done, and he was extremely ingenious in the means he devised for doing it without increasing them. The shades and shutters for regulating the exact amount of light which should be admitted; his own position relatively to its direct rays, and to those that were reflected from surrounding objects; the adaptation of his dress and of the temperature of the room to his rheumatic affections; and the different contrivances for taking notes from the books that were read to him, and for impressing on his memory, with the least possible use of his sight, such portions of I speak here of the time during which he was busy with his Histories. In the intervals between them, as, for instance, between the "Ferdinand and Isabella" and the "Mexico," between the "Mexico" and "Peru," &c, his habits were very different. At these periods he indulged, sometimes for many months, in a great deal of light, miscellaneous reading, which he used to call "literary loafing." This he thought not only agreeable, but refreshing and useful; though sometimes he complained bitterly of himself for carrying his indulgences of this sort too far. each as were needful for his immediate purpose, --were all of them the result of painstaking experiments, skilfully and patiently made. But...