CURIOUS CHARACTERISTIC. 73 



and successful of all the numerous books which pro- 

 ceeded from my father's pen during his thirty years 

 of literary life. 



In this work I notice particularly that which was 

 perhaps a characteristic of all his writings, namely, 

 the utter absence of anything whatever in the way of 

 a peroration, or even of a thought-out and carefully 

 turned conclusion. He usually began both his books 

 and magazine articles with a thoughtful introduction, 

 comprising a statement of the subject which he in- 

 tended to treat, and of the point of view from which 

 he was about to consider it. Of this, in fact, he 

 made a systematic practice, often saying that, after 

 settling upon a title for a book or an article, the 

 hardest part of the work was to find a suitable 

 beginning. And I have frequently known him to 

 expend at least as much time and thought over his 

 prefatory paragraph as over the whole of the re- 

 mainder of the article. But with regard to a con- 

 clusion he rarely seemed to trouble himself at all, 

 and merely adopted the simple plan of leaving off 

 when he had said all that he had to say upon the 

 subject. Thus "Homes without Hands" concludes 

 with the sentence "As is the case with many of the 

 illustrations to this work, the sketch was taken from 

 nature." That is all; nothing more at all. "Com- 

 mon Objects of the Country," in like manner, ends 

 with a sentence equally simple " Figure 6 shows 

 the curious Earth-star, chiefly remarkable for its re- 

 semblance to the marine star-fish." And so on. And 



