Page:My father as I recall him (IA cu31924013473610).djvu/80

the South Kensington Museum in "the Forster Collection," and they all show I think, the extreme care and fastidiousness of the writer, and his ever-constant desire to improve upon and simplify his original sentence. His objection to the use of a lead pencil was so great that even his personal memoranda, such as his lists of guests for dinner parties, the arrangement of tables and menus, were always written in ink. For his personal correspondence he used blue note paper, and signed his name in the left-hand corner of the envelope. After a morning's close work he was sometimes quite pre-occupied when he came into luncheon. Often, when we were only our home party at "Gad's Hill," he would come in, take something to eat in a mechanical way—he never ate but a small luncheon—and would return to his study to finish the work he had left, scarcely having spoken a word in all this time. Again, he would come in, having finished his work,