My life : a record of events and opinions - Wallace-online.org

FRIENDS AND OCCUPATIONS 315names and abbreviations—a kind of hieroglyphics, ashe himself termed them, which could hardly be fullyutilized by any one but the writer of them. Thewhole would, I estimate, have given material enoughto fill six or eight large volumes, and had he himselfbeen able to devote some years of good health to thetask, I have little doubt he would have produced awork which would have ranked among the classicalrecords of travel and exploration.All this I had to sort out, piece together, andcondense into a connected narrative, occupying twovolumes of moderate bulk ; and to arrange for therequisite maps, and for such illustrations as could beobtained to render the work attractive. This hasbeen, though often tedious, on the whole a labour oflove for over two years. It is now going throughthe press, and I hope will be published very soonafter the present volume.Soon after I had begun this laborious piece ofwork, I was left sole executor to my dear friend(and father-in-law) Mr. William Mitten, who died inJuly, 1906, at the ripe age of 8y. This involved mein the usual legal formalities and added to my alreadylarge correspondence, thus, to some extent, impedingmy literary work. But I still continued to writearticles on subjects that specially interested me.Towards the end of the same year I wrote an articleon A " New House of Lords," showing how the upperchamber could become elective, and thus fulfil its truefunctions of a consultative and regulative body, whilebeing generally in harmony with the best thoughtand opinion of the time. A second article, entitled**Personal Suffrage," laid down the principles onwhich a truly democratic but simple elective system