so, should not write on the subject. An
author has quite as much right to characterise angels and saints in his
or her pages as a painter has to depict them on his canvas. And I do not
keep my belief in the supernatural as a sort of special mood to be
entered into on Sundays only; it accompanies me in my daily round, and
helps me along in all my business. But I distinctly wish it to be
understood that I am neither a 'Spiritualist' nor a 'Theosophist.' I am
not a 'strong-minded' woman, with egotistical ideas of a 'mission.' I
have no other supernatural belief than that which is taught by the
Founder of our Faith, and this can never be shaken from me or 'sneered
down.' If critics object to my dealing with this in my books, they are
very welcome to do so; their objections will not turn me from what they
are pleased to consider the error of my ways. I know that unrelieved
naturalism and atheism are much more admired subjects with the critical
faculty; but the public differ from this view. The public, being in the
main healthy-minded and honest, do not care for positivism and
pessimism. They like to believe in something better than themselves;
they like to rest on the ennobling idea that there is a great loving
Maker of this splendid Universe, and they have no lasting affection for
any author whose tendency and teaching is to despise the hope of heaven,
and 'reason away' the existence of God. It is very clever, no doubt, and
very brilliant to deny the Creator; it is as if a monkey should, while
being caged and fed by man, deny man's existence. Such a circumstance
would make us laugh, of course; we should think it uncommonly 'smart' of
the monkey. But we should not take his statement for a fact all the
same.

Of the mechanical part of my work there is little to say. I write every
day from ten in the morning till two in the afternoon, alone and
undisturbed, save for the tinpot tinkling of unmusical neighbours'
pianos, and the perpetual organ-grinding which is freely permitted to
interfere _ad libitum_ with the quiet and comfort of all the patient
brain-workers who pay rent and taxes in this great and glorious
metropolis. I generally scribble off the first rough draft of a story
very rapidly in pencil; then I copy it out in pen and ink, chapter by
chapter, with fastidious care, not only because I like a neat
manuscript, but because I think everything that is worth doing at all is
worth doing well; and I do not see why my publis