It is the second ninety-plus-degree day in Baltimore in a row, and the Spring Pollen Offensive, which seemed finally to have left off, threw in a fresh division yesterday. Moreover, I have five sections to oversee during the next ten hours.

So, instead of something original, you’re getting served something about the writing life warmed over from The Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes:

George Watson on William Empson: “Revision claimed him. He had to revise until his prose ceased to bore even him. ‘I still have to put in the careless ease,’ he once remarked, sitting by the pond in his Hampstead garden, when I reproached him gently for not collecting his essays. ‘The careless ease always goes in last.’ ”

While you are unlikely to have a pond in Hampstead to linger by, I hope, as our long holiday weekend begins, that you at least have a cool place and a restorative beverage. You have my leave to put in the careless ease next week.