students who cared to study the methods which
he had found so serviceable.

To name one or two more English novelists: Thomas Hardy's novels would
seem to have the slow growth of deep-rooted things. His greatest work,
_The Return of the Native_, was on the stocks for four years, though a
year seems to have sufficed for _Far from the Madding Crowd_.

The meticulous practice of Stevenson is proverbial, but this glimpse of
his method is worth catching again.

The first draft of a story [records Mr. Charles D. Lanier],
Stevenson wrote out roughly, or dictated to Lloyd Osbourne. When all
the colours were in hand for the complete picture, he invariably
penned it himself, with exceeding care.... If the first copy did not
please him, he patiently made a second or a third draft. In his
stern, self-imposed apprenticeship of phrase-making he had prepared
himself for these workmanlike methods by the practice of rewriting
his trial stories into dramas and then reworking them into stories
again.

Nathaniel Hawthorne brought the devoted, one might say, the devotional,
spirit of the true artist to all his work, but _The Scarlet Letter_ was
written at a good pace when once started, though, as usual, the germ
had been in Hawthorne's mind for many years. The story of its beginning
is one of the many touching anecdotes in that history of authorship
which Carlyle compared to the Newgate Calendar. Incidentally, too, it
witnesses that an author occasionally meets with a good wife.

One wintry autumn day in Salem, Hawthorne returned home earlier than
usual from the custom-house. With pale lips, he said to his wife: "I am
turned out of office." To which she--God bless her!--cheerily replied:
"Very well! now you can write your book!" and immediately set about
lighting his study fire and generally making things comfortable for his
work.

The book was _The Scarlet Letter_, and was completed by the following
February, Hawthorne, as his wife said, writing "immensely" on it day
after day, nine hours a day. When finished, Hawthorne seems to have been
dispirited about the story, and put it away in a drawer; but the good
James T. Fields chanced soon to call on him, and asked him if he had
anything for him to publish.

"Who," asked Hawthorne gloomily, "would risk publishing a book from me,
the most unpopular writer in America?"

"I would," was Field's rejoinder, and after some further sparring,
Hawthorne owne