... The desire to return to the prairie was intense,
but exposure to the sunlight would have destroyed his sight.... When his
condition was at its worst, he resolved to attempt the composition of the
"History of the Conspiracy of Pontiac," for which he had been collecting
material since his days in college. Suffering from extreme weakness of
sight, a condition of the brain prohibiting fixed attention, and a nervous
derangement, he yet set out upon this labor, using a wooden frame strung
with parallel wires to guide his crayon. Books and documents were read to
him, but never, without injury, for more than a half-hour at a time, and
frequently not at all for days. For the first half-year he averaged six
lines of composition a day. And he wrote, I suppose, at least ten hundred
thousand lines. His health improving, he dictated, pacing a dark garret.
He then entered upon "France in the New World." The difficulties were
incalculable.... Wholly unable to use his eyes, he had before him the task
of tracing out, collecting, indexing, arranging, and digesting a great
mass of incongruous material, scattered on both sides of the Atlantic.
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