“How on earth do you manage it?” I exclaimed. “Does a secretary pass the papers before you and blot them as you sign?”
“I have no secretary and no one blots them,” he replied. “A book, containing from one to three hundred documents, is put before me, and I lift each one with my left hand while I sign with my right. I don’t stop to blot them, they blot themselves—or smudge,” he laughed; “and as each book is completed I throw it on the floor and take up another from the table beside me. Every hour or so one of the clerks comes in, and wheels the signed books away on a trolley and places another bundle on the table. I sometimes sign my name for three hours straight off, which means four thousand to four thousand five hundred signatures without rising from my seat.”
“I am going to assist at a bazaar,” I exclaimed, “and I really think it would be a splendid idea to put you in a little room dressed up in gorgeous Eastern attire, charge sixpence for admission, and write in large letters on the outside: “‘The man who can sign his name fifteen hundred times in an hour!’ We should make quite a lot of money.”
He laughed. Writer’s cramp never troubled him.
When the day came that I really was overpowered with work, that my table was strewn with commissions, that I had secretaries hard at it, sorting, arranging, looking out photographs or figures; as I dictated between whiles and they typed, a horrible pain, like hot sand, came in my eyes. At first intermittently, then more frequently, till at last a hideous dread of blindness—like my father’s—seized hold of me. Off to Sir Anderson Critchett I went. “Overwork, overstrain; you must give up your work for a time.” “I can’t,” I replied. “Then you must be responsible for the consequences.” Lotions, blisters behind the ears, brought improvement, but still that hot, burning sand was there.
To Sir John Tweedy I then repaired. “Inflammation of the eyes from overwork; you must rest the eyes. Never work at night, and always wear a black shade when possible.”
So I gained nothing fresh from him. Both gave me exactly the same advice and warned me of danger.
I wore that hideous shade for a year, tore it off the moment a stranger appeared—never went out at night. The glaring lights of the theatre had become positive torture; but, in spite of all, I managed somehow to keep up my work and write another book.
Gradually, by resting my eyes whenever possible, never reading unless obliged, and sitting much in the dark, my eyes became better and remain better.
And thus the last days of the great Century of Progress sped into the realm of past ages. But when the newcomer crossed the threshold of Time, with all the new century’s opportunities and hopes, I was far away under the Southern Cross amid the brilliant colouring and luxuriant vegetation of the tropics.