I

HOW I WRITE A NOVEL.

AMELIA B. EDWARDS.*

Condensed for THE LITERARY DIGEST from a Paper in

Worthington's Magazine, Hartford, Conn., March.

HAVE sometimes been asked how I write a novel, and how I first came to think of writing a novel. Again, it is a matter of extreme surprise to some inquirers that, being a novelist, I should have been taken up so warmly of late-years with Egyptology.

How I write a novel is easily told. I first construct an elaborate plot, in which the whole story is mapped out, chapter by chapter. This I do conscientiously, and with the best possible intentions. Then I begin to write the book, and I write something entirely different! I find this to be an invariable law of nature, as far as my own brains are concerned. Nevertheless, my elaborate skeleton plot is not wasted. Far from it. It has the effect of clearing away the story as it is eventually developed, and is an essay in the art of "how not to do it." It must not, however, be supposed that I thenceforward plunge on plotless and at random. By no means. The plot I finally act on is generally evolved out of the débris of my rejected "skeleton," and it consists of a few brief memoranda to which I then adhere without further change. Being a firm believer in the value of fact in fiction, I never describe scenery which I have not seen, nor even buildings. But in describing interiors, I furnish them to suit the story and the people. As for characters, I have rarely-very rarely-depicted persons with whom I have any acquaintance, no matter how distant. I make the acquaintance of my characters as I go along, just as I might make the acquaintance of people in real life. They unfold themselves to me, betraying their virtues and weaknesses as events bring those virtues and weaknesses (or it may be vices) to the surface. Moreover, it never seems to me that these persons are creatures of my own creation. On the contrary, and this is one of the most pecu liar points in my experience as a novel-writer-they have too often developed in a manner contrary to my own wishes and intentions, and so have become sources of serious embarrassment. I have been continually hampered by the influence of these airy personages, and have found myself powerless to cope with the inevitableness of certain chains of events which I might fairly be supposed to hold in my own control. The characters do literally as they please, go where the whim takes them, marry the people of their own choice, and insist on their own way, however strong it may be. They shape their own ends, and I cannot rough-hew" those ends, however much my judgment may disapprove the course they pursue.

It does not seem to me that I invent anything. It seems to me that I am present at all that takes place, and that I write down only what I observe. It seems to me that I go into a room, and look around it, that I note what is there and so describe it. The characters converse, and I write down what they say. As far as I can understand this obscure process of thought, the so-called "inventive power" is, to its possessor, identical in operation and nature with the power of memory. I can detect no difference between the two. Precisely as "I summon up the memory of things past" so do I summon up the phantoms of things that never were. The images of the latter are as distinct, as concrete, as the images of the former.

To return, however, to the little I have to tell about novelwriting; it is, undoubtedly, a most interesting, absorbing, and delightful occupation, but it is also very fatiguing. It makes a large demand on the physical strength as well as upon the emotions. It is like being author, scene-painter, propertyman, and the whole strength of the company in a huge drama of one's own creation. The novelist is each character in turn, and goes through the joys, sufferings, and vicissitudes of all in This it is which I find so exhausting, and this is why I have always needed, at the end of a long story, what I never need after any other kind of literary work-a complete rest. *Written shortly before her death.

turn.

SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY.

RECENT SCIENCE.

ARCHEOLOGY.

The Zimbabwe Ruins.-The British East African Company have reserved the Zimbabwe ruins and the area within a radius of one mile from the top of Zimbabwe Hill for archæological and scientific purposes, and no settlements, farms, or mines will be permitted within that radius.-Nature, London, February.

Copper Articles of Very Ancient Date from Chaldea.-Some of the articles found in M. de Sarzec's explorations in Chaldea throw further light on the existence of a "Copper Age" prior to the Bronze Age. M. Berthelot has examined in particular a votive figure supposed to belong to a period prior to the fortieth century B.C. It is of commercially pure copper, exhibiting merely traces of lead, arsenic, and sulphur, along with a little lime and carbonates. At its epoch, bronze and tin were not yet worked in either Egypt or Chaldea.

CHEMISTRY.

Artificial Diamonds.-By heating either iron or silver under strong pressure, M. Moissant has discovered, in the dross, some black diamonds with a density of 3.5, sparkling like rubies, combustible in oxygen, with a product of four times their weight of carbonic acid.

The melting appears to liquify the carbon, the appearance of which after cooling depends on the measure of pressure and temperature.

Some of the fragments obtained by M. Moissant, which were submitted for examination by the Academy of Sciences presented a lustrous aspect, with curved angles, and proved entirely identical with natural black diamonds.

In some of his experiments M. Moissant even produced small transparent crystals with all the characteristics of ordinary diamonds, but these microscopic crystals were in such small quantities that he was never able to obtain more than fractions of milligrammes. M. Moissant used an electric furnace and a very high temperature.-Revue de Chemie Analytique, Paris, February 16.

Attempt to Found a Chemical Theory on a Basis of Physical Comparison. This paper, by G. Jaimann (Monats-Hefte, 13th), is an attempt to formulate a theory which might take the place of the atomic theory. It is purely inductive in all its parts, and does not start with preconceived ideas as to the constitution of matter, or the nature of the change to be observed, but demands for the explanation of stocheometric phenomena the existence of a simple physical principle only, such as holds for all other physical changes, and only such definite conceptions as are necessary for the application of this principle. If in physical structure all substances are alike their behavior is determined by the numerical value of a single property on which all chemical properties depend, and which may be called the chemical condition or the chemial. Differences in the value of this property are, as the author shows, approximately measurable, and determine the changes which will take place in given substances under certain conditions. Application of the principle to a number of different cases is made in the paper. Journal of the Chemical Society, London, January. The Manufacture of Ozone.-Last Monday evening the Ozone Syndicate, Limited, gave a demonstration of its process at the works of the Brush Electrical Engineering Company, Limited, Belvidere Road, Lambeth, S. E. The apparatus consists of a large number of glass tubes arranged side by side like the tubes in a surface condenser. In each tube there lies a wire connected to one pole of a transformer giving a current of 25,000 volts pressure. The connections are so made that at any instant each tube connected to, say, the positive terminal,

has its adjacent tubes connected to the negative terminal, and vice versa. The result is that the air between the tubes suffers electrification in opposite directions at each reversal of the current, or 100 times per second. The oxygen in the air is converted into ozone, and by arranging for a current of air across the tubes, a regular supply of ozone can be obtained. It is stated that working under very favorable conditions the apparatus will give 240 grammes of ozone per horse-power hour. Two or three ozone plants are being erected on the Continent for the sterilization of water for brewing purposes, and it is anticipated that other uses will be found in the bleaching and chemical industries.-Engineering, London, February 17,

ELECTRICITY.

An Excellent Way to Utilize the Refuse of Towns.-The deposit of sewage and house dust is one of the most important and usually one of the worst managed of the difficulties with which every town has to deal. If the town is fortunate enough to be on the banks of a river it is almost a certainty that the river will be converted into an open sewer. If there is no river the refuse will be dumped on some vacant plot, generally in the neighborhood of dwelling-houses, and always near enough to affect the health of the inhabitants. The annual 'estimated amount of "sludge" to a town with a population of 50,000 is, exclusive of surface water, slop water, and manufacturers' refuse, over 25,000 tons. The enormous refuse of large towns can now be handled and utilized by the use of the "destructor" with the greatest ease, to the great benefit of the health of the population and the coffers of the municipality. The refuse is emptied into a number of cells, and by a wavelike motion is gradually moved forward over the furnace.

All

the moisture and impurities are thus removed and the dry product can be used for a variety of purposes. The temperature of combustion is over 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and this intense heat, when applied to raising steam and generating electricity, renders sufficient power available to more than repay the cost of both collection and burning. This question is being much discussed in England, where electrical and borough engineers are earnestly canvassing the merits of the latest modifications of the destructor. A company has been formed for contracting to supply electric light derived from the dust refuse of towns. The company claim that 20,000 tons of house dust, if treated as they suggest and burnt in suitable boilers, might be made to produce as much as 56,000,000 indicated horse-power hours, equal to an engine of 1,183 indicated horse-power, working for 4.734 hours, for electric lighting.Electrical Review, New York, March 4.

New Applications.-An interesting invention is a sculptor's tool, operated by an electric motor reciprocating the tool, and enabling the sculptor to perform his work rapidly and accurately.

Another interesting device is the electric schiseophone, designed to detect flaws or cracks in metal. The object to be tested is struck three times per second by a hardened steel rod which passes through a microphone, the sounds being communicated to a telephone receiver in a distant chamber. If the object being tested is perfect, the sound remains the same as the instrument is passing over its surface. The slightest flaw or inequality of the metal is indicated by a sudden change in volume of sound in the receiver.

The influence of electricity in metallurgy has been notable especially in the manufacture of aluminum. In a patent issued during the year, which has been undergoing the vicissitudes of the Patent Office since 1883, is described a simple method of fusing the ore by first springing an arc, which melts the ore and renders it a conductor, the current then electrolytically decomposing the ore and throwing down pure aluminum metal.-Electrical Review, New York, February 25.

PHYSICS,

Diffusion of Light.-Mr. Sumpner, in a very interesting article in the London Electrician, of February 3d, gives some very useful information regarding the results of the diffusion of light. He tells us that the illumination due to repeated reflections of the light before it is finally absorbed may far exceed that due to the direct rays. Diffused light, too, is softer and more pleasant to the eyes. He gives the general reflecting power of whitewashed walls and ceiling as sufficing to double the direct illuminating power. In an extreme case of walls covered with mirrors the diffused light will be more than ten times that of the direct rays, one hundred candle-power of the latter being represented by 1,250 candle-power.

The Absence of Air from the Moon.-Astronomers have long felt that the absence of air from the moon is a fact that demands some special explanation. Most of the globes in space which are known to us are encompassed by more or less copious atmospheres; why, then, is the moon an exception? why should there be a gaseous investment to the earth and to Venus, to Mars and to Jupiter, and why should the moon alone be devoid of such covering? The sun and other stars are also so very copiously endowed with gaseous surroundings that the total want of anything of the kind about the moon becomes all the more enigmatical.

At last a light has been thrown on the matter, and an explanation is now provided which is so consonant with the present state of physical knowledge, that I cannot hesitate to accept it. The absence of air from the moon is a necessary consequence of the kinetic theory of gases.

According to the principles of this theory, now generally accepted among physicists, any gas such as oxygen or hydrogen, is composed of molecules which move with an extreme degree of rapidity. The molecules of hydrogen, for instance, which are the most nimble of all the gases in their movements at ordinary temperatures, dash along so fast as to travel on the average somewhat more than 6,000 feet a second. Oxygen and nitrogen have movements which are generally much less than those of hydrogen. But it is to be noted that, in the course of their movements, individual molecules frequently attain velocities very much in excess of the average pace. This is the important point for our present purpose, for on it depends the explanation of the phenomenon of which we are in search.

It can be shown that the mass and the dimensions of the moon are such that if a body were projected upwards from its surface at a pace, let us say, of half a mile a second, that body would ascend to a very considerable elevation, ultimately, however, the attraction of the moon would overcome its outward movement, and the body would tumble back again. If, however, the initial pace were so much greater that it attained a certain critical amount of about a mile a second, then the missile, according to the laws of motion, would ascend from the surface of the moon and go on and on, never to be again recalled by any power that the moon's attraction could put forth.

Let us suppose that the moon were now to be invested with a new atmosphere of oxygen or nitrogen. The molecules of these gases will, of course, be darting about with the velocities appropriate to their nature, but, generally speaking, the speeds with which they are animated remain within the limits of velocity which it is in the power of the moon to control. But these are only the average speeds, and it will frequently happen that individual molecules will be animated by a speed equaling or exceeding the critical pace of a mile a second; if this takes place at the upper layers of the moon's atmosphere, the little molecules will take leave of the moon altogether. Other particles follow in the same fashion, and thus it happens that an atmosphere composed of such gases as these we know, could not permanently abide on the moon.

On the earth we have and we retain a copious atmosphere.

The reason simply is that the earth is massive enough to require that a projectile shall attain a speed of about six miles a second before it goes off and takes leave of our globe. This velocity it would seem that the molecules of oxygen and nitrogen do not generally or ever reach. Hence it is that while the earth can retain the atmosphere with which it was endowed, the moon is unable to do likewise.-Sir Robert Ball, Lowndean Professor at Cambridge, England, in Science, New York, February 24.

PHYSIOLOGY.

Action of Fatiguing Muscular Work on the Respiratory Interchange. During ordinary muscular activity the combustion processes in the body take the same direction as during rest; this is shown by the respiratory quotient remaining constant. When the work becomes excessive, this normal is upset and the respiratory quotient rises. The muscular katabolism is not directly dependent on the work actually performed, but on the amount of muscular energy expended; this is a variable quantity, as under favorable conditions muscle works more economically (that is, with a less loss of heat) than when the conditions are unfavorable. One of the unfavorable conditions is fatigue. In other words, during fatigue more muscular energy is expended in doing a given amount of work, than when the muscle is fresh. At the end of a period of work the respiratory processes remain increased for a few minutes; if, however, fatigue has supervened, or the work has been done under unfavorable conditions, as, for instance, with an insufficient supply of oxygen, the respiratory exchanges remain disturbed for a longer period.-A. Loewy, in Pfluger's Archive, 49.

VEGETABLE PHYSIOLOGY.

The Nitrogen Question.-The discovery of the intervention of soil micro-organisms in supplying leguminous plants with nitrogen served to confirm the view that plants were themselves incapable of drawing any portion of their supply directly from the atmosphere. Recent experiments by A. Petermann, an account of which is given in the Med. Acad. Roy. Belgique, 47, 1892, tend to disprove the correctness of this conclusion. Two series of experiments were made with lupins, haricots, and barley with a view to test the correctness of the hypothesis, and Petermann concludes that the results as a whole prove the intervention of atmospheric nitrogen. Indeed he regards the results of the second series of experiments as affording conclusive proof that the gain depended essentially on the fixation of elementary nitrogen. At the same time the intervention of combined nitrogen was manifest in the results obtained with haricots and barley. The author concludes generally that root nodules are not a general cause of nitrogen fixation, but assist in special cases.

WHAT IS LIFE? LUIGI LUCIANI.

Translated and Condensed for THE LITERARY DIGEST from a Paper in

W

Revue Scientifique, Paris, January 28.

WHICH of the two aspects of life is the true one? That which appears as a physiological phenomenon, or the other one which manifests itself in us as a psychical phenomenon? Here we pass beyond the limits of science, and enter the world of metaphysics.

The soul is a property of matter, say the materialists; matter is a form or an instrument of the soul, answer the idealists and spiritualists. Each of these affirmations has its special advantage and a character of relative truth. The language of the materialist must always be preferred by science, because (as Huxley has judiciously observed) connecting the phenomenon of life with other phenomena, it invites the thinker to make researches into the physical conditions which accompany life, contributes to the progress of positive knowledge, and tends to make us exercise over the moral world a control anal

ogous to that which we exercise over everything which is in relation to the physical world.

On the other hand, we cannot despise the advantages of different kinds offered by the language of the spiritualist. The artist and the moralist will always prefer the language which covers all visible nature with a poetic veil, speaks to the feelings, provokes altruism, and stays the invasion of pessimism. When Francis of Assisi-according to the legend-speaks to the animals, and, addressing the wolf, affably calls him brother wolf, notwithstanding all the materialism which the love of science imposes on us, we feel—why deny it?—a little moved by his ingenuous goodness. And when, in his "Cantico delle creature," he addresses the sun and the moon as brother sun and brother moon, notwithstanding the somewhat childish nature of this language, we feel as though we had been transported to the heights of poetry, and we appreciate better the dignity of our nature.

Yet, as well with materialism as with spiritualismı (it cannot be too often repeated), we are beyond the boundaries of science. To the question “what is life in itself?" I, a physiologist, have this answer only: observed from an exterior point of view it is matter; felt internally, it is soul. The close mixture, or rather the confusion of the real and the ideal in nature; that is life in its most elevated form, that is the great mystery which art will always have to celebrate, and which science will never be able to explain.

HE authorities of the British Museum, through R. Martineau, have just published a catalogue of the complete editions of the Bible found in that famous collection of literary treasures. The catalogue does not list editions of separate books or of separate parts of the Bible, but only complete editions, except in the case of the English. It covers 242 pages, and mentions some 27,000 such entire Bible editions. It begins by giving an account of the polyglot editions, commencing with those of Spain, which country made the first and ablest movements in such projects, although singularly enough it is the very country where later the most determined opposition to the spread of the Scriptures in the vernacular were maintained. Between 1514 and 1517 Cardinal Ximenez published the great Complutensian Bible, the first polyglot edition of the Word, in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek. Only 600 copies were printed, and this edition did not secure the popular sanction until three years later, and not until then could it be disposed of. The next polyglot was that of Plantin, of Antwerp, 1569-73. Walton's great English polyglot appeared in 1657. This record of the polyglots covers thirteen pages of the catalogue, while the Greek Bibles cover only two, and the Latin forty-five. In the last mentioned list Gutenberg's Mazarin Bible heads the number. In the fifteenth century no fewer than seventy-five editions of the Latin Bible were issued, the majority of them appearing in Germany. The first edition published elsewhere than in Germany was issued in Rome, but the publishers were the Germans, Shweyheyen and Pannartz, in 1471. The complete Bible editions cover eighty-eight pages of the catalogue, or one-third of the whole volume. The oldest edition of a part of the Bible in English was the New Testament published at Cologne by Tyndale. The Bibles other than the Greek, Latin, or English Bibles cover ninety pages in the catalogue and include no fewer than eighty-three languages. The list of German Bibles covers twenty-one pages; the Dutch, fifteen; the French, thirteen. The first German Bible published is that of John Mentelin, issued at Strassburg in 1466. The first complete French Bible left the press in 1510. Two

Italian editions appeared in Venice in 1471. The first Spanish Bible, that of Cassiodoro de Regna, was not published in Spain, but in Basel, in 1569, and the first Portuguese Bible appeared in far-distant Dutch East India. The first Bible in the Slavonic language was issued in 1488 in Bohemia. In Russia permission to publish the Scriptures in the languages of the country was not secured until 1822. Poland, however, had several editions in the vernacular as early as the sixteenth century. Six Chinese Bible versions have appeared, of which two are in the Mandarin dialect. A complete Japanese Bible has not yet been issued. Among the great number of Bibles which have appeared in the language of uncultured peoples, that of Madagascar is the most interesting. It was printed on the island itself from 1830 to 1835. Complete copies are exceedingly rare. Soon after the completion of the edition a violent persecution of Christians broke out and the natives separated the Bible into parts in order that they might be better able to hide them. Of the Bibles in Indian tongues the

multiplication of the bodies of holy persons, without their veneration for each of the remains being diminished in the least. It is worth noting that the nature of the honorary qualifications accorded to the same saint varies in different countries. Thus, for example, this same Daniel has, at Cairo, the name of Nebbi-Danial, that is, they give him the title of Prophet, as being at the same time that which suits him best, and is the most honorable they can confer. In Algeria or Morocco, feudal countries, the title they give to saints is Sidi, which signifies Lord, which is also the title there of military and political chiefs. In Central Asia they give to those canonized persons whom they respect most, as to the Prophet Daniel, the title of Khodja, which means, in Arabic, writer or lettered.

MISCELLANEOUS.

DANGERS OF HYPNOTISM.

THE TOMB OF THE PROPHET DANIEL. EDOUARD BLANC.

Translated and Condensed for THE LITERARY DIGEST from a Paper in Revue des Deux Mondes, Paris, February 15.

SIN

INCE Samarcand has been a portion of the Russian dominions, it has become easy to visit. The traveler from Europe can reach the old capital of Tamerlane by the Transcaspian Railway, which the Russian Government has constructed across the Turcoman deserts with so much boldness, and which was finished as far as Samarcand six years ago. Less than three miles to the northeast of Samarcand and outside of the extreme limits of the ancient city, is a tomb which is called Khodja-Daniar. This tomb, according to the Mussulman legends, is the burial-place of the Prophet Daniel. The spot where this tomb stands is called Afrousiab, and there are seen ruins which are very probably those of the ancient city of Maracanda, destroyed by Alexander the Great. This was an immense town, whose walls, we are told, had a compass of ninety stadia, or about ten miles. It is separated from Samarcand by a naked hill, the soil of which is one vast cemetery. The sepulchre of Khodja-Daniar is built on a sort of terrace or cornice. A half-dozen great masts, from the tops of which hang some sacred rags or tougs made of horse-tails, and the height of which is proportioned to the importance of the saint, rise above the sarcophagus, which stands in the open air, sheltered by no building of any kind.

This sarcophagus is constructed with heavy masonry. The saint who reposes there is, beyond a doubt, really dead; but his mode of behavior is more than curious, since, though dead, he continues to grow constantly in his sepulchre. Every two or three years, the mollahs who are the guardians of the place determine by a learned calculation, the data of which I was not able to learn, how much it is proper to lengthen the sepulchre, in order to make its dimensions correspond to those of its tenant. To judge from the present length of the tomb, the height of the prophet Daniel was or should have been, at the date of my visit in 1891, about eighty feet. His height must be a little more now. It should be observed that the growth of the saint is in length only and not in breadth. The development of the breadth of his shoulders is not in proportion to that of his height.

There exists in other parts of Islam other tombs of the Prophet Daniel. Of these others, one of the most celebrated is at Cairo. This fact need not astonish us: the Mussulmans admit without hesitation the duplication or even indefinite

"The artificially induced sleep known by the old-fashioned Latin name somnambulism, or, subsequently, as mesmerism, and rebaptised in Greek hypnotism,' as though it were a new thing, is a subjective phenomenon of great interest, and of some complexity. It is, perhaps, not altogether unworthy of the attention which has been bestowed on it by French and German physician.. On the other hand, and here I can only venture to express a purely personal opinion, which will be taken for just what it is thought to be worth-1, at least, am of opinion, after carefully watching the course of events at the Salpêtrière and Bicêtre, and studying the enormously voluminous literature which owes its origin to the school of Nancy, to the Paris school, and to Belgian and Austrian writers, that the importance of these studies has been vastly exaggerated. I am disposed to think that it is rather the picturesque eccentricity of the phenomena and the striking mise en scène to which human automatism lends itself, which has attracted so much attention, than any real medical or physiological importance of the subject. Hypnotism, even as practiced at the Salpêtrière, has, so far as I can see, taught us little, if anything, of the functions of the brain or of the organs of the mind which we did not know before. I find little in the writings of Charcot, of Bernheim, or of Janet but an excessively detailed development of facts and principles, already soundly, clearly, and usefully laid down by Carpenter and Braid. With a lucidity, clinical power, and picturesqueness which are beyond praise, M. Charcot has described, pictured, and exemplified a most striking series of hysterical phenomena. He has shown that nearly all, if not quite all, hypnotics are neurotic persons to whom the general classification of hysteria or neurasthenia may fairly be applied.

"Of the intrinsic correctness of his classification of the stages of hysteria in its larger forms I am skeptical. Nor do I think it a permanent nosological classification which will last in medicine. These various stages, so regularly produced in classical order, appear to be performances originating partly in the auto-suggestion of an originally morbid patient, and then perpetuated by imitation, by suggestion, by ward training, and by habit, in others. I am persuaded that they are artificial, and I even venture to predict they will cease to exist when the succession, so to speak, of M. Charcot's trained patients is broken, and when the habit of performance in the wards and theatre of the Salpêtrière is given up, as I am inclined to think it will be given up, before long; Such patients and such stages of the greater hysteria are not found elsewhere, unless the patients are led up to them by training or by imitative instincts; they are non-natural; they have no real existence in medicine, and will take no enduring place, so far as one can judge, in the history of medicine."

Mr. Hart thinks that the follies of La Charité are the natural offspring of certain extravagances, into which even the thoughtful men of the school of the Salpêtrière have been led, and