for proofs and letters. Having good health, she is seldom indisposed for work; if she is, she takes something mechanical, such as translating or copying.

Dr. Karl Frenzel, editor of one of the leading Berlin newpapers, has to struggle hard at first to overcome his unwillingness to compose, but after he has written for some time any aversion which he may have experienced disappears. He rarely works at night, never after midnight, but prefers the evening to the afternoon for literary production. He sometimes rewrites whole pages of his novels two or three times, but never makes a plan beforehand. He has the queer habit of making bread pellets while at work; that is, whenever he is absorbed in thought. He writes with facility and swiftness, devoting from three to four hours a day to literary labor.

Dr. Otto Franz Gensichen, German dramatist, poet, and essayist, always writes in the daytime, almost exclusively in the forenoon, from eight till twelve o'clock. He makes an exception in the case of lyrical poems, which, of course, must be written down whenever they occur to the mind. After his manuscript is done, he polishes it here and there, and then copies it; for while slowly transcribing he can most easily detect mistakes. While at work in the morning he smokes a mild cigar, which is, however, sometimes omitted. When writing, he likes to have as much light and silence about him as he can possibly attain. While the manuscript lies on the writing table, and the author is meditating on the subject in hand, he is in the habit of pacing up and down the room. At first he repeats the words aloud to test their euphonism and smoothness; he then commits the spoken words to paper. can boast of himself that he has never written a line “invita Musa," without being fully inclined to composition. Sometimes he does not write for months, but when the proper mood takes possession of him, he is very industrious. Even then, however, he does most of his work before midday, and, exceptionally, from five till eight in the afternoon. As he is a bachelor and given up altogether to authorship, he is governed entirely by his moods.

He

Paul Burani, the brilliant Parisian journalist

and dramatist, is forty years of age, married, father of one daughter,― Michelette,- owner of the house he lives in, and, take it all in all, the perfect type of a successful literarian. Before writing a play, he makes a very elaborate outline, which is developed afterward. Ordinarily he rewrites a play three times, but being both a ready and a rapid writer, the task is quickly accomplished. When compelled to stop writing in consequence of fatigue or a lack of interest, he takes up something else, promenades in his garden, or smokes a cigar. He is indifferent to noise, and can compose almost anywhere. The great number of books which he has written has given him the reputation of being one of the most productive authors of the times, but he does not write for more than five or six hours a day.

Ludwig Habicht, a German novelist, loves to write by the light of the sun, and invariably works in the daytime, never at night. When his manuscript is finished and corrected, he has it copied by a professional copyist, whereupon it goes to the compositor. Habicht prefers to write in the open air, and does not use a writ ing-desk. The duration of his working hours depends entirely upon his health and moods, but he never writes for more than four or five hours a day; and sometimes does not pen a line for months.

Formerly, when the world—that is to say, the German world — used to know Karl Stelter, the poet, as a merchant, he was in the habit of spending his leisure hours in the evening in the production of poetry, and, strange though it may seem, his best poems were made after a hard day's work. Now, since he has retired from business and is in prosperous circumstances, he versifies whenever and wherever he wants to, in the evening as well as in the daytime. He writes his poems with a lead pencil, and polishes them for weeks before they are published. He works with great ease, and is a ready improviser; but he never writes against his inclination.

Brander Matthews does his work between breakfast and lunch, as a rule; and works at night only occasionally. He makes elaborate notes, and then writes at white heat, revising at his leisure.

André Theuriet, the Parisian novelist, makes an outline of his work first; he delineates each chapter of his novel, indicating the situations, personages, dialogues, and so on. Thereupon the novel soon assumes a definite form. Theuriet spends six hours a day at his writing-desk, but always in the morning. He does not believe in night work. In the afternoon he revises the work of the previous day. During working hours the author drinks two cups of tea and smokes one or two pipes of tobacco. Theuriet retires early in the evening, between ten and eleven o'clock, and rises in the morning at a quarter before six. This regular mode of life explains why the novelist is able to write so much, and is a key to the productiveness which has astonished his contemporaries.

Paul Lindau, another German novelist, critic, and journalist, dictates a great deal, sometimes without inclination, and sometimes after hasty lead-pencil sketches. When he writes himself only one manuscript is made. He incessantly smokes cigarettes while at work. Only when

he has labored uninterruptedly a long time does he refresh himself with coffee, tea, wine, and water. As a rule, Lindau writes with ease. He declares that dictating tires him out more than if he should write himself, but by dictation he is enabled to do twice as much work as he could otherwise accomplish. Generally, he writes for from four to five hours a day, but sometimes he has spent ten or even eleven hours in literary work.

A. v. Winterfeld, the German humorist, devotes the day only to literary work. His original manuscript is committed to the press, for he never copies what he has written. He composes with great ease and swiftness, and spends four hours a day at the writing-desk.

Hector Malot, the Parisian novelist, makes an outline of his romances beforehand, faintly indicating all important incidents of his work. He does not take stimulating drinks, either when at work or when at rest; with him the work itself acts as a stimulant. He rises at five o'clock in the morning, and writes till eleven. After breakfast he takes a walk. At two o'clock in the afternoon he resumes work and keeps at it until seven o'clock in the evening; but he never composes at night. Nine months

of the year are devoted to literary labor, but the remaining three months he spends in travel, study, and recreation.

Victorien Sardou, the dramatist, writes his play twice; first on little scraps of paper, then on foolscap. The first draft, when it is finished, is a maze of alterations and delineations.

Mezerai, the famous historian, used to study and write by candle-light, even at noonday in summer, and, as if there had been no sun in the world, always waited upon his company to the door with a candle in his hand.

"The method of Buckle, the historian," so says his biographer, "was chiefly remarkable for careful, systematic industry, and punctilious accuracy. His memory appeared to be almost faultless, yet he took as much precaution against failure as if he dared not trust it. He invariably read with "paper and pencil in his hand, making copious references for future consideration. How laboriously this system was acted upon can be appreciated only by those who have seen his note-books, in which the passages so marked during his reading were either copied or referred to under proper heads. Volume after volume was thus filled, everything being written with the same precise neatness that characterizes his manuscript for the press, and indexed with care, so that immediate reference might be made to any topic. But, carefully as these extracts and references were made, there was not a quotation in one of the copious notes that accompanied his work that was not verified by collation with the original from which it was taken."

Joaquin Miller says that he has always been so poor, or, rather, has had so many depending on his work, that he has "never been able to indulge the luxury of habits," and that he has worked in a sort of "catch-as-catch-can" way. Having been mostly on the wing since he began writing, he has done his work in all kinds of ways, and hours, and houses. However, now, since he has a little home, his life has become regulated. He rises at daylight, so as to save candles, and never works at night. After he has made and imbibed his coffee, he digs or pulls weeds, and cultivates his flowers, or works in some way about the greens, for an hour or so, and at length, when he feels compelled to literary work, and can no longer keep from it, he

writes whatever he feels that he must set down; and then he writes only as long as he feels impelled. Holding, as he does, that all modern authors think too little and write too much, he never writes as long as he can keep from it. He looks forward with hope and pleasure to the day when he shall be able to stop writing entirely. As for stimulants, he never takes them. Yet he often smokes a cigar about the greens before beginning work. But he would be ill if he attempted to drink while writing. As for making an outline of his work, he generally jots down a lot of sketches or pictures, one each day; then he puts these together, and the play, poem, or novel is finished. He works for from three to five hours every day, then goes out till dinner time. He once lived in a rude log cabin, built on an eminence overlooking the city of Washington, D. C. There his latchstring was always out. He now lives near Oakland, Calif., not in one cabin, but in three, each as rude as that of any settler in the Sierras.

George Manville Fenn, during a period of some eighteen years, has tried a good many plans, with the result of settling down for the last twelve or fourteen years to one only. He prefers the daytime decidedly for mental work, because the brain is fresh and vigorous from the rest of the past few hours, and because the work produced is lighter and better and can be

sustained longer; and the writer is not exhausted when he leaves his table. Brilliant work has often been done at night; but when Fenn has made the trial he has found the results of a month's day-work better, and there has been more in quantity. He invariably makes an outline or skeleton of his work, and often with his story first in a dramatic form, which, he thinks, adds much to the vigor and effect of a tale. He is in the habit of using tobacco, but has never looked upon it as a stimulus, regarding it rather as a soothing aid to reflection. He dines early, so as to have the evenings free. The afternoon is spent in work, a visit to town, or a chat with friends; he takes tea early, and afterward often writes for two or three hours. For years Mr. Fenn has been trying to solve this problem: Why can one write easily and fairly well one day, and have the next be almost a blank? After long study and much musing, he has come to the detemination that he knows nothing whatever about it, and that the only thing to do is to lead as quiet and temperate a life as one can. Of course, the stimulated and excited brain will produce a few weird and powerful bits of work; but, judging from what Mr. Fenn has seen, the loaded mind soon breaks down.

six,

DETROIT, Mich.

Dr. H. Erichsen.

at

To a young man who asked me how much one would have to know to be a reader, and in what lines, I was obliged to answer: "As much as you can possibly absorb and remember about everything. Very little that you hear or read but will come into use at some time, if you follow the vocation of corrector of the press."

A crushing rejoinder this would have been to

many; but he had pluck, a strong desire to enter journalism, and a willingness to begin in a humble position. He went to work on a country paper: did errands, worked at the case, learned press-work, informed himself fully as to the shire town, its inhabitants, matters of local geography, reported a little, then got a chance as proof-reader on a city paper not far away, filled up with more information, till "the force"

began to think him omniscient, and is now a shining light in New York journalism.

Not the less in a book office is wide and miscellaneous knowledge desirable, but to it must be added a thorough study of grammar and rhetoric, and a freshening of one's remembrance as to Latin, German, and French, and, if possible, the acquirement of Greek. The present writer finds a half hour in each day to devote to a steadily pursued theme; time taken sometimes from business, sometimes from pleasure, but unfailingly bestowed. The question of capitals must be reviewed occasionally: not for the old hackneyed rules, of course, but for newer usages, exceptional cases, and present-day authors' individual peculiarities. The plague o' printers, the hyphen, might be the burden of one's cogitations for years, at the rate of thirty minutes per diem, and still be a bane, and not a blessing; and as to syllabication, — life is all too short.

Punctuation, after the first anxious year or two, settles into routine: you will recognize the collocation of words intuitively, and put in a stop as lightly as the master organist draws one out; even the rhetorical dashes, "exclaims," and parentheses fall into line and troop readily at call. Once in a while a peculiar case will arise, but it will generally succumb to a keen and thorough analysis.

There is another need, the careful study of words, new and old. A prevailing fad among literary people at the present time is to revive quaint, obsolete, and forgotten words, or words that are derived from scientific terms.

A poet

uses "mezereon" for our familiar "Daphne"; "vair" (borrowed from heraldry) for variegation; the other day I had "purfle" for embroider; Dr. Holmes says, in one of his later poems,

"The frail muse shall 'imp' her crippled wing." Certain words, too, bother the reader by deceptiveness at first glance: "impassable " and "impassible," "immanent" and "imminent," "gauge" and "gage," will serve for examples."

A vexed question often is as to putting foreign or semi-foreign words in italic or roman. "Via," and "versus," and "alias," etc., used conversationally, are often seen italicized.

Taste is one's only guide here, unless it is thought best to follow blindly our dictionaries, and consider the words they adopt as anglicized. The proper place of the adverb in a sentence is another troublesome thing; I may say, though, the place is not so trying as the overplus of adverbs. The following combination occurs in a recent work: Presumably, however, Mr. Wilson was trying to save his store, and therewith, also, not impossibly, the whole city of Utopia, from destruction." Comment upon this sentence is needless; for writers cannot read their productions in the critical, almost hostile, spirit of the corrector, who is paid for slaughter, and whose queries, even, win the commendation of his employer. Another writer attempts to give currency to the phrases "received it back again"; "they could all co-operate together"; "a continuous river," etc., and is confronted by the tireless blue pencil of interrogation.

The reader's equipment is not complete, indeed, with the possession of the armor of the best use of language. He must have the triple mail: good English, thorough mechanical knowledge, practicality. Of the first I have treated, somewhat slightly; in the next division may be placed first a close watch of all fonts of type, so that a spurious letter will be detected at a casual glance upon the page. It is easy to do this; but not without a knowledge of specimen books and cases of type. After this come leading and spacing, and again I may say, though hard for the tyro, these are minor matters to the veteran. Other things are the size of page, running titles and folios, sinkages, captions, gaining and losing lines (to avoid long pages), indentation of poetry, style of foot-notes, and scores of other minutiæ.

On the last point, "practicality," a whole chapter might be written; but I have already spent much time on a dull subject, and will sum it briefly. It consists in so steering your course, while marking everything open to objection, that your corrections will not cost the employer any money, the foreman any trouble and perplexity, the compositor any time; changes must not interfere with the author's pet prejudices, or tread upon any corn of your chief reader, though the two be as contradictory and inflammable as powder and a spark. You must not

adhere slavishly to old forms, nor be too radical; you must mark all broken letters, yet not too many; must not overrun type, but must have

good spacing; -in short, you must use good common sense; and that's the end of it. Douglas Dane.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.

Not to become absorbed in trivialities nor addicted to woman's besetting sin, worry, it is wise for the home-stayer of to-day to ride a hobby; to have many "irons in the fire "; to be so occupied as neither to notice slights nor magnify physical infirmities.

Among many diversions, none proves such a veritable treasure-trove to the housewife with journalistic tendencies as the preparation of manuscripts for unsolicitous editors. Nothing is handier than a blank book and pencil, and the noise of her children is not disturbing. To drive her work rather than be driven, and yet snatch the coveted moments for her specialty, a woman must use judicious forethought. If she serve as housekeeper, she learns to "dovetail one affair into another," and hence becomes a more efficient worker. Disagreeable drudgery is despatched with unruffled brow and patient hand, when accompanied by ideas for an essay in prospect. Common sense is cultivated by exercise. Less unnecessary toil is done in the house, less "pottering"; consequently, fewer golden minutes are wasted.

The would-be littérateur finds, unconsciously, that her choice of books assumes a higher standard because of her ambitions. She can spare no time for desultory skimming or for the latest popular novel. Discretion in her own reading extends to care in the selection of her children's literature. Soon they aspire to scrapbooks, "clippings," and bits of choice verses, "like mamma's." In pursuit of knowledge, a writer becomes more careful and critical of the subject in hand; she notes style, phrase, and delicacy of suggestion. Patience, persever

ance, the power to do a deal of uncongenial labor, and withal the satisfying pleasures of honest hard work, find growth in her nature.

Consulting the dictionary for all unknown words met in her reading, she adds to her vocabulary, as well as to her conversational powers. Courtesy to all often throws in her way "material" for her sketches; the universal "bore" is more easily tolerated. The author exerts her powers of observation; an increased love of nature follows, and this in turn bears fruit in the delight of her children.

In this avocation are found "resources " for the rainy day and the days of convalescence Since one must think, why not indulge to some purpose?

Nourishing her "one talent," its possessor has no tormenting conscience to accuse her during the "wee gray hours." She will never degenerate into the proverbial "Hannah Jane." She has a lively interest in the education of her family; she keeps abreast of her husband and children, and postpones that day of rude awakening which comes to all young people when they discover that their parents are not infallible. The mother with an aspiration teaches her boys and girls to be helpful, and thus is avoided that thoughtless selfishness which characterizes the offspring of indulgent parents. Might we not go farther, and assert that the writer gossips less at the neighbors'? Aside from all pecuniary returns, the benefits of this penchant remain the same, whether or not the manuscripts ever see the light.

MICHIGAN CITY, Ind.

Mona Fargher Purdy.