Ephemeris VII. — To his Stenographer, a Ready Writer

Hi, boy! My secretary, skilled in dashing shorthand, make haste and come! Open your folding tablets wherein a world of words is compassed in a few signs and finished off as it were a single phrase. I ponder works of generous scope; and thick and fast like hail the words tumble off my tongue. And yet your ears are not at fault nor your page crowded, and your right hand, moving easily, speeds over the waxen surface of your tablet. When I declaim, as now, at greatest speed, talking in circles round my theme, you have the thoughts of my heart already set fast in wax almost before they are uttered. I would my mind had given me power to think as swiftly as you outstrip me when I speak, and as your dashing hand leaves my words behind.

Who, prithee, who is he who has betrayed me? Who has already told you what I was but now thinking to say? What thefts are these that your speeding hand perpetrates in the recesses of my mind? How come things in so strange an order that what my tongue has not yet vented comes to your ears? No teaching ever gave you this gift, nor was ever any hand so quick at swift stenography: Nature endowed you so, and God gave you this gift to know beforehand what I would speak, and to intend the same that I intend.