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If you do not want me to go, send me below as a prisoner. I'm not going to act under our gunner." "Mr Leigh," said the lieutenant, "I shall report the whole of your insubordinations in a properly written-out despatch. At present I am compelled to make use of your assistance, so take the gunner and six men." "Six will not be enough, sir." "Then take seven," said the lieutenant, impatiently.
It was his practice when going into the field for work, to take with him written-out paragraphs from the book that he had at the moment in mind and to repeat these paragraphs between the various chores or between the wood-chopping until every page was committed by heart. Paper was scarce and dear and for the boy unattainable. He used for his copying bits of board shaved smooth with his jack-knife.
Such a man soon joins the written-out division, and, unless he travels much or has a keenly humorous eye for the things about him, he runs a very good chance of becoming an intolerable bore.
The subject of brain-exhaustion has a very peculiar interest for the public as well as for the professional penman; half the slovenly prose which ordinary men use in their correspondence is due to the bad models set by written-out men, and the agonising exhibitions made by some thousands of public speakers in this devoted and long-suffering land are also due to the purblind weakness of the exhausted man.
The mould remains the same in each case, although there may be casual variations in the hue of the material poured out and moulded. All these forlorn folk are either verging toward the written-out condition or have reached the last level of flatness.
Scores of written-out men pretend to instruct the public daily or weekly; the supply of rank commonplace is pumped up, but the public rush away to buy some cheap story which has signs of life in it.
Fame may not be greatly worth trying for; but at least a man may try to turn out the very best work of which he is capable. Some of our brightest refuse to aim at the highest, and they land in the dim masses of the written-out.
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