USE OF THE TYPE-WRITES. 279 



very much about it, and he was distinctly reticent when 

 the subject was mentioned. And he had quite a won- 

 derful talent for inventing in a small way, and managed 

 to make a lot of curious contrivances of no little in- 

 genuity and great practical value. 



Owing to the severe accident to his right hand 

 already referred to, my father towards the end of his 

 life was visited with threatenings of the dreaded 

 " writer's cramp." Since the time of the accident itself 

 or rather since that of the comparative recovery 

 which was all he ever enjoyed he had never been able 

 quite to trust the hand, which was frequently visited 

 with nervous tremors and twitches, obliging him to 

 steady it with the left when writing, or holding a cup 

 or a tumbler. But when the more pronounced symp- 

 toms set in, and grew daily more decided, he procured 

 a portable type-writer, and thenceforward discarded the 

 use of the pen altogether, except for correspondence, and 

 sent printed instead of written MS. to the printers. 



For this alteration, no doubt, the compositors were 

 truly thankful, for, while his hand-writing in letters was 

 beautifully neat and legible, his MS. hand was little 

 more than a straggling series of microscopical hiero- 

 glyphics, the difficulty of deciphering which was in- 

 creased ten-fold by his inveterate habit of making 

 numerous subsequent additions on small slips of paper, 

 from every one of which, when affixed to the side of 

 the sheet, ran a long line to the particular spot where 

 he desired it to be inserted. As, in a single sheet of 

 manuscript, there would sometimes be ten or a dozen 



