read for transcription, and mistakes would mean angry letters of correction from Dr. Abbott, probably.
Monday was my day off. I went to Plymouth Church with a new notebook and three soft lead pencils, duly sharpened at both ends. In the brief interval before Sunday I practised hard. The church was packed to the roof, as I sneaked up the aisle--an unfamiliar place, I felt it!--to a little table placed immediately beneath the pulpit. I came in after the service, but just in time for the sermon. There were no other reporters present. It thrilled me to see Dr. Abbott, who, as a young man of twenty-three, had heard Lincoln speak on slavery.
The "Theology of an Evolutionist" was an arduous assignment that strained every faculty I possessed, but indifferent shorthand lay at the root of the strain. Dr. Abbott's delivery was sure and steady, more rapid than it sounded. He never hesitated for a word, he never coughed, or cleared his throat, or even sneezed. There were none of those slight pauses which help a poor shorthand-writer to pick up valuable seconds. The stream of words poured on relentlessly, and the rate, I should judge, was 250 a minute. Verbatim reporting was impossible to me. I had to condense as I went along, and to condense without losing sense and coherence was not easy. My pencil was always eight or ten words behind the words I actually listened to, and the Pitman outlines for the words I wrote down had to be recalled, while, at the same time, memory had to retain those being actually uttered at the moment. Being out of practice I often hesitated over an outline, losing fractions of a second each time I did so. These outlines come automatically, of course, to a good writer. Then there was the sense, the proportion, the relative values of argument and evidence to be considered--matters that could not be adjusted in the office afterwards, when there was barely time, in any case, to transcribe my notes before going to Press. The interest I felt in the subject, moreover, delayed my mind time and time again. Occasionally a pencil-point would break as well, and turning it
round in my hand meant important delay in a process
