Occupational Hazard
Sheer sloth, rather than the deliberation proper to the confection of jewelled prose, has hitherto saved me from the ravages of writer's cramp. I had indeed, in so far as I thought about this complaint at all, supposed it to be an imaginarY or anyhow an obsolete infirmity, surviving—as housemaid's knee survives on the strength of one reference to it by Jerome K. Jerome—as a sort of stand-by for the more obvious humorists. I know now that this is not so. Mr. Charles Morgan (than whom it is difficult to think of a less impetuous scribe) suffers from writer's cramp; Mr. Arthur Ransome, another martyr to it, showed me the other day a device with which he was hoping to allay his confrere'S sufferings. This consisted of a pencil round which Mr. Ransome had deftly knotted three or four turk's heads of varying sizes; by adjusting the position of these the diameter of the pencil is in effect altered to suit the grip and the cramp is relieved. Mr. Ransome, as well as being very good at tying knots, is a most kindly man.
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