Of Randall N. Saunders' poem, "The Seasons," published by the Raphael Tuck & Sons Co., as a holiday booklet, more than 1,700 copies were sold the first season in America alone. Probably as many more were sold in England.

John Henton Carter ("Commodore Rollingpin"), author of "Thomas Rutherton," is at work on three new books, which are just being put in type, "Duck Creek Ballads," "Duck Creek Sketches," and "Nancy," all to be issued before January.

Hattie Horner, one of the most successful

Kansas writers, who occupies two editorial positions on Chicago papers, one being that of literary editor of the Home World, was married recently to O. E. Louthan, of Chicago, at the home of her parents at White Water, Kan.

Robert Louis Stevenson is a laborious writer. During his stay in Samoa it has been his habit to begin work at six o'clock in the morning, and sometimes to keep at it with Trollope-like assiduity all day long. He told a guest not long ago that on those days when his mind does not work as smoothly as its wont he rewrites his manuscript to such an extent that at the end of the day not one of the original sentences is left unchanged; and occasionally he spends three weeks on a single chapter.

The home of Mrs. A. L. Wistar, the translator, is at Wallingford, Penn. Her father is Dr. Furness, the Unitarian clergyman, who at the age of ninety-one is still vigorously preaching, and her brother is the Shakespearian scholar, Dr. H. H. Furness.

A. H. Gibson, of Star Valley, Kan., is engaged in writing a temperance story, entitled "The Glenwood House." Although he has written a number of stories for the New York Independent, New York Ledger, Golden Days, the National Tribune, the American Press Association and other publishers, this is the first book which he has attempted.

The September number of St. Nicholas will be the first issue of that magazine since Wide Awake was merged in it. The publication of the latter magazine will cease, the good-will and subscription list having been purchased by The Century Co., the publishers of St. Nicholas.

Professor William Minto, M.A., LL.D., who has recently died in England, wrote a little treatise, published about the time of his death, entitled "Plain Principles of Prose Composition," in which he gives to beginners this astonishing advice: "Except in avowedly didactic treatises, the endeavor to be lucid and simple is thankless labor. It is only fair to warn the beginner that if he writes lucidly, many honest folk will set him down as a shallow thinker. Intricacy of expression often gets a man credit for profundity, if his ideas are sufficiently commonplace. We believe that he agrees with us, and fancy that he sees grounds too deep to be ex

pressed."

Since Dickens' death the firm of Chapman & Hall has sold 643,000 copies of "Pickwick." The profits on Dickens' works still amount to about $40,000 a year.

The Scribners will publish soon Robert LouisStevenson's latest story, the sequel of "Kidnapped," under the author's original title, "The Adventures of David Balfour." The English edition of the book will be issued as "Catriona."

Mr. Ruskin's publisher, George Allen, says that since 1871 there has never been a loss on any of Ruskin's works, and that between 1886and 1892 the author received as his share of the profits about $140,000.

Of Mrs. Anna Katharine Green Rohlfs" "Marked Personal'" 20,000 copies were sold within a few weeks after publication. Mrs. Rohlfs' thoughts just now are of the drama and her husband's rendition of "The Leavenworth Case," which will probably be taken before a Boston audience this fall. Mr. Rohlfs is a man of genius and ability, and his wife believes more fully in his capabilities than in her

own.

Mrs. Arthur Stannard ("John Strange Winter") has been elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a distinction that has been conferred on only one other woman since the society was founded, in 1823. The other fellow is Mrs. Napier Higgins, the wife of the Q. C. of that name. This lady wrote a standard work on the women of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which took her ten or twelve years.

VOL. VI.

Edward Everett Hale gives the following description of his mode of life, which at the same time is full of advice to authors in general:

"The business of health for a literary man seems to me to depend largely upon sleep. He should have enough sleep, and should sleep well. He should avoid whatever injures sleep.

"This means that the brain should not be excited or even worked hard for six hours before bedtime. Young men can disregard this rule, and do; but as one grows older he finds it wiser to throw his work upon morning hours. If he can spend the afternoon, or even the evening, in the open air, his chances of sleep are better. The evening occupation, according to me, should be light and pleasant, as music, a

No. 9.

novel, reading aloud, conversation, the theatre, or watching the stars from the piazza. Of course, different men make and need different rules. I take nine hours for sleep in every twenty-four, and do not object to ten.

"I accepted very early in life Bulwer's estimate that three hours a day is as large an average of desk work as a man of letters should try for. I have, in old newspaper days, written for twelve consecutive hours; but this is only a tour de force, and in the long run you waste strength if you do not hold every day quite closely to the average.

"As men live, with the telegraph and the telephone interrupting when they choose, and this fool and that coming in when they choose to say, I do not want to interrupt you; I will only take a moment,' the great difficulty is to hold your three hours without a break. If a man has broken my mirror, I do not thank him for leaving the pieces next each other; he has spoiled it, and he may carry them ten miles apart if he chooses. So, if a fool comes in and breaks my time in two, he may stay if he wants to; he is none the less a fool. What I want for work is unbroken time. This is best secured early in the morning.

"I dislike early rising as much as any man, nor do I believe there is any moral merit in it, as the children's books pretend; but to secure an unbroken hour, or even less, I like to be at my desk before breakfast. As long before as possible I have a cup of coffee and a soda biscuit brought me there, and in the thirty to sixty minutes which follow before breakfast, I like to start the work of the day. If you rise at a quarter past six, there will be comparatively few map pedlers, or book agents, or secretaries of charities, or jailbirds, who will call before

eight.

The hour from 6.30 to 7.30 is that of which you are most sure. Even the motherin-law or the mother of your wife's sister's husband does not come then to say that she should like some light work with a large salary as matron in an institution where there is nothing to do.

I believe in breakfast very thoroughly, and in having a good breakfast. I have lived in Paris a month at a time and detest the French practice of substituting for breakfast a cup of coffee, with or without an egg. Breakfast is a meal at which much time may be spent with great advantage. People are not apt to come to it too regularly, and you may profit by the intermission to read your newspaper and lecture on its contents. There's no harm in spending an hour at the table.

"After breakfast do not go to work for an hour. Walk out in the garden, lie on your back on a sofa and read, in general, 'loaf' for that hour, and bid the servant keep out everybody who rings the bell, and work steadily till your day's stint is done. If you have had half an hour before breakfast, you can make two hours and a half now.

The

"It is just so much help if you have a good amanuensis; none, if you have a poor one. amanuensis should have enough else to do, but be at liberty to attend to you when you need. Write as long as you feel like writing; the moment you do not feel like it, give him the pen and walk up and down the room dictating. There are those who say that they can tell the difference between dictated work and work written by the author. I do not believe them. I will give a share in the Combination Protoxide Silver Mine of Grey's Gulch to anybody who will divide this article correctly between the parts which I dictated and those which are written with my own red right hand.

"Stick to your stint till it is done. If Philistines come in, as they will in a finite world, deduct the time which they have stolen from you and go on so much longer with your work till you have done what you set out to do.

"When you have finished the stint, stop. Do not be tempted to go on because you are in good spirits for work. There is no use in making ready to be tired to-morrow. You may go

out of doors now, you may read, you may in whatever way get light and life for the next day. Indeed, if you will remember that the first necessity for literary work is that you have something ready to say before you begin, you will remember something which most authors have thoroughly forgotten or never knew.

"This business of writing is the most exhausting known to men. You should, therefore, steadily feed the machine with fuel. I find it a good habit to have standing on the stove a cup of warm milk, just tinged in color with coffee. In the days of my buoyant youth I said, 'of the color of the cheek of a brunette in Seville.' I had then never seen a brunette in Seville; but I have since, and I can testify that the description was good. Beef tea answers as well; a bowl of chowder quite as well as either. Indeed, good clam chowder is probably the form of nourishment which most quickly and easily comes to the restoration or refreshment of the brain of man.

"If this bowl of coffee, or chowder, or soup is counted as one meal, the working man who wishes to keep in order will have five meals a day, besides the morning cup of coffee, or of coffee colored with milk, which he has before breakfast. Breakfast is one; this extended lunch is another; dinner is the third, say at half-past two; tea is the fourth, at six or seven; and, what is too apt to be forgotten, a sufficient supper before bedtime is the fifth. This last may be as light as you please, but let it be sufficient, a few oysters, a slice of hot toast, clam chowder again, or a bowl of soup. Never go to bed in any danger of being hungry. People are kept awake by hunger quite as much as by a bad conscience.

"Remembering that sleep is the essential force with which the whole scheme starts, decline tea or coffee within the last six hours before going to bed. If the women-kind insist, you may have your milk and water at the teatable, colored with tea; but the less the better.

"Avoid all mathematics or intricate study of any sort in the last six hours. This is the stuff dreams are made of, and hot heads, and the nuisances of waking hours.

"Keep your conscience clear. Remember that because the work of life is infinite you

cannot do the whole of it in any limited period of time, and that, therefore, you may just as well leave off in one place as in another.

"No work of any kind should be done in the hour after dinner. After any substantial meal, observe, you need all your vital force for the beginning of digestion. For my part, I always go to sleep after dinner and sleep for exactly an hour, if people will only stay away; and I am much more fond of the people who keep away from me at that time than I am of the people who visit me."

A Humorist's Regimen.

Robert Barr (whose pseudonym, "Luke Sharp," is familiar to the readers of the Detroit Free Press) has written an article on "How a Literary Man Should Live," which may be cited in conclusion:

66

"I am not," he says, an advocate of early rising. I believe, however, that every literary man should have fixed hours for getting up. I am very firm with myself on that score. I make it a rule to rise every morning in winter between the hours of six and eleven, and in summer from half-past five until ten. A person is often tempted to sleep later than the limit I tie myself to, but a little resolution with a person's self at first will be amply repaid by the time thus gained, and the feeling one has of having conquered a tendency to indolence. I believe that a literary man can get all the sleep he needs between eight o'clock at night and eleven in the morning. I know, of course, that some eminent authorities disagree with me, but I am only stating my own experience in the matter, and don't propose to enter into any controversy about it.

"On rising I avoid all stimulating drinks, such as tea or coffee. They are apt to set the brain working, and I object to work, even in its most disguised forms. A simple glass of hot Scotch, say half a pint or so, serves to tide over the period between getting up and breakfasttime. Many literary men work before breakfast, but this I regard as a very dangerous habit. I try to avoid it, and so far have been reasonably successful. I rest until breakfasttime. This gives the person a zest for the morning meal.

"For breakfast the simplest food is the best. I begin with oyster stew, then some cold chicken, next a few small lamb chops and mashed potatoes, after that a good-sized beefsteak and fried potatoes, then a rasher of bacon with fried eggs (three), followed by a whitefish or two, the meal being completed with some light, wholesome pastry, mince pie for preference. Care should be taken to avoid tea or coffee, and I think a word of warning ought to go forth against milk. The devastation that milk has wrought among literary men is fearful to contemplate. They begin, thinking that if they find it is hurting them, they can break off, but too often before they awaken to their danger the habit has mastered them. I avoid anything at breakfast except a large tumbler of brandy, with a little soda water added to give it warmth and strength.

"No subject is of more importance to the literary aspirant than the dividing of the hours of work. I divide the hours just as minutely as I can, and then take as few of the particles as possible. I owe much of my success in life to the fact that I never allow work to interfere with the sacred time between breakfast and dinner. That is devoted to rest and thought. Much comfort can be realized during these hours by thinking what a stir you would make in the literary world if you could hire a man like Howells for five dollars a week to do your work for you. Such help, I find, is very difficult to obtain, and yet some people hold that the labor market is overcrowded. The great task of the forenoon should be preparation for the mid-day meal. The thorough enjoyment of this meal has much to do with a man's success in this life.

"Of course, I do not insist that a person should live like a hermit. Because he breakfasts frugally, that is no reason why he should not dine sumptuously. Some people dine at six and merely lunch at noon. Others have their principal meal in the middle of the day, and have a light supper. There is such merit in both these plans that I have adopted both. I take a big dinner and a light lunch at noon, and a heavy dinner and a simple supper in the evening. A person whose brain is constantly worried about how he can shove off his work on

"After a good rest when dinner is over, remain quiet until supper-time, so that the brain will not be too much agitated for the trials that come after that meal.

"I am a great believer in the old adage of 'early to bed.' We are apt to slight the wisdom of our forefathers; but they knew what they were about when they advised early hours. I always get to bed early, - say two or three in the morning. I do not believe in night

work. It is rarely of a good quality. The brain is wearied with the exertions of the day and should not be overtaxed. Besides, the time can be put in with less irksomeness at the theatre, or in company with a lot of congenial companions who avoid the stimulating effects of tea, coffee, and milk. Tobacco, if used at all, should be sparingly indulged in. I never allow myself more than a dozen cigars a day; although, of course, I supplement this with a pipe.

"When do I do my literary work? Why, next day, of course." DETROIT, Mich.

Dr. H. Erichsen.

Once upon a time The Woman said unto herself, "I will be a journalist," and she betook herself to an Editorial Sanctum.

And as time went on she learned to grind out copy, yea! and to boil down columns into "sticks," and to make herself useful. And one day it happened that The Personage in the Editorial Sanctum spake unto her, saying, “Go and interview The Great Woman." And The Woman answered, "Verily !" though her heart was in her mouth and terror possessed her soul.

Therefore she made herself fine, and she wondered within her secret heart if The Great Woman would perceive that her gown was of last year's fashion and her gloves not without reproach, and then she meandered forth.

When she reached the house of The Great Woman her heart failed her, and she turned and fled. Once more and she said unto herself, "I will!" but she walked by looking neither to the right nor to the left. Then she said unto herself, "Go to! I must!" and she did.

She pressed the button and the sable servitor did the rest.

She waited in fear and tremblings, and she wished, how she wished, that she had never, never entered an Editorial Sanctum. And her heart sank within her boots and her gown had never before felt so shabby nor her gloves so worn, nor had the humility of her place in life ever so oppressed her.

Lo, The Great Woman!

The Woman's tongue clave to the roof of her mouth, her heart palpitated, and her cheek paled. But when she looked upon The Great Woman, she beheld that The Great Woman also was in a state of nervous agitation and a very ordinary gown. Such a quiet, peaceable-looking little woman was she, who seemed quite as much in dread of that awful impersonal obstruction, The Interview, as The Woman herself.

And then and then

The Woman never knew exactly how it hap pened. It was by inspiration. The Woman found herself growing very cosy and confiden