278 FRANCIS ORPEN MORRIS 



" took it out " in sleep ; though when awake he 

 was wide awake, and that instantly. 



If at night he was by chance sleepless at intervals, 

 or if he awoke betimes, he used sometimes to jot 

 down on a writing-tablet, kept by his bedside for the 

 purpose, any thoughts that occurred to him that 

 he wished afterwards to recall, for fear of for- 

 getting them. This he could do in the dark in 

 characters that he himself, but probably no other, 

 could decipher. 



To this gift of easily sleeping the fact is no 

 doubt due that advancing years that irresistible 

 power which with so many writers causes a slacken- 

 ing in the speed of the pen, or perhaps even periods 

 of stoppage altogether had in Mr. Morris's case no 

 such result. It is probable that for the last twenty 

 years of his life he was fully as actively employed 

 in this way as he was in the twenty which preceded 

 them. 



While it is true that all his more voluminous 

 works may be assigned to the earlier period, the 

 last published of them being the " County Seats," still, 

 what with the publication of numerous pamphlets, 

 small treatises, innumerable letters to newspapers 

 as well as to private individuals, to say nothing of 

 corrections of proofs and emendations of volumes 

 already published, the years from 1873 onwards 

 were years of ceaseless literary work and activity 

 in many directions. A leading feature in all this 

 mass of writing and work was the large and in- 

 creasing share given up to the cause of humanity, 



