work is not so
good as my old."

"Oh, nonsense!" said Mr. Howells. "You write just as well as you ever
did. Your taste is improving, that's all."

James Oliver Curwood, a novelist, tells of a recent encounter with the
law. The value of a short story he was writing depended upon a certain
legal situation which he found difficult to manage. Going to a lawyer of
his acquaintance he told him the plot and was shown a way to the desired
end. "You've saved me just $100," he exclaimed, "for that's what I am
going to get for this story."

A week later he received a bill from the lawyer as follows: "For
literary advice, $100." He says he paid.

"Tried to skin me, that scribbler did!"

"What did he want?"

"Wanted to get out a book jointly, he to write the book and I to write
the advertisements. I turned him down. I wasn't going to do all the
literary work."

At a London dinner recently the conversation turned to the various
methods of working employed by literary geniuses. Among the examples
cited was that of a well-known poet, who, it is said, was wont to arouse
his wife about four o'clock in the morning and exclaim, "Maria, get up;
I've thought of a good word!" Whereupon the poet's obedient helpmate
would crawl out of bed and make a note of the thought-of word.

About an hour later, like as not, a new inspiration would seize the
bard, whereupon he would again arouse his wife, saying, "Maria, Maria,
get up! I've thought of a better word!"

The company in general listened to the story with admiration, but a
merry-eyed American girl remarked: "Well, if he'd been my husband I
should have replied, 'Alpheus, get up yourself; I've thought of a bad
word!'"

"There is probably no hell for authors in the next world--they suffer so
much from critics and publishers in this."--_Bovee_.

A thought upon my forehead,
My hand up to my face;
I want to be an author,
An air of studied grace!
I want to be an author,
With genius on my brow;
I want to be an author,
And I want to be it now!

--_Ella Hutchison Ellwanger_.

That writer does the most, who gives his reader the most knowledge, and
takes from him the least time.--_C.C. Colton_.

Habits of close attention, thinking heads,
Become more rare as dissipation spreads,
Till authors hear at length one general cry
Tickle and entertain us, or we die!

--_Cowper_.

The author who speaks about his own books is almost as bad