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The conditions just now are exceptionally favourable--that is, a ��������ë�ٳ��� scribendi has coincided with abundance of matter to write about, but the organs of the great external world naturally provide a model for the writer.

The unprecedented prices obtained for the really excellent collection of Mr. Wolfe, in Christmas week of 1863, seemed to have inoculated art collectors and dealers with what may be called a cacoethes vendendi, and until far into the succeeding summer the picture auctioneers were called upon to knock down dozens of galleries of "private gentlemen about to leave the country," varying in merit from respectable to positively bad.

But my physician informs me that I have got the "cacoethes scribendi," which he says is as bad as the small-pox, toothache, and yellow fever.

One of my sisters, Girolama, a girl devoted to reading, writing, and translating from the French—for she too was bitten with our family cacoethes—spoke like a sibyl, gravely and eloquently, on these painful topics.

Cacoethes, kak-o-ē′thēz, n. an obstinate habit or disposition.