I seldom asked him a question during the dictation--or interrupted in any
way, though he had asked me to stop him when I found him repeating or
contradicting himself, or misstating some fact known to me. At first I
lacked the courage to point out a mistake at the moment, and cautiously
mentioned the matter when he had finished. Then he would be likely to
say:
"Why didn't you stop me? Why did you let me go on making a donkey
of myself when you could have saved me?"
So then I used to take the risk of getting struck by lightning, and
nearly always stopped him in time. But if it happened that I upset his
thought, the thunderbolt was apt to fly. He would say:
"Now you've knocked everything out of my head."
Then, of course, I was sorry and apologized, and in a moment the sky was
clear again. There was generally a humorous complexion to the
dictations, whatever the subject. Humor was his natural breath of life,
and rarely absent.
Perhaps I should have said sooner that he smoked continuously during the
dictations. His cigars were of that delicious fragrance which belongs to
domestic tobacco. They were strong and inexpensive, and it was only his
early training that made him prefer them.
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