time she had made the minute woman conquer
temptation, and in the dawn of the summer morning leave Thornfield.
"After Jane left Thornfield, the rest of the book," says Miss Martineau,
"was written with less vehemence and with more anxious care"--the world
adds, "with less vigor and interest."

"Ouida" (Louise de la Ramee) writes in the early morning. She gets up
at five o'clock, and, before she begins, works herself up into a sort of
literary trance.

Professor Wilson, the Christopher North of _Blackwood's Magazine_,
jotted down in a large ledger "skeletons," from which, when he desired
an article, he would select one and clothe it with muscle and nerve. He
was a very rapid writer and composer, but worked only when he liked and
how he liked. He maintained that any man in good health might write an
entire number of _Blackwood's_. He described himself as writing "by
screeds"--the fit coming on about ten in the morning, which he
encouraged by a caulker ("a mere nut-shell, which my dear friend the
English opium-eater would toss off in laudanum"); and as soon as he felt
that there was no danger of a relapse, that his demon would be with him
the whole day, he ordered dinner at nine, shut himself up within triple
doors, and set manfully to work. "No desk! An inclined plane--except in
bed--is my abhorrence. All glorious articles must be written on a dead
flat." His friend, the Ettrick Shepherd, used a slate.

Dr. Georg Ebers, professor at the University of Leipzig, Saxony, who is
known all over the world as the author of novels treating of ancient
Egyptian life, and as the writer of learned treatises on the country of
the Khedives, prefers to work in the late evening hours until midnight
when composing poetry, but favors daylight for labor on scientific
topics. He makes a rough draft of his work, has this copied by an
amanuensis, and then polishes and files it until it is satisfactory to
him, that is, as perfect as he possibly can make it. He finds that
tobacco stimulates him to work, and, therefore, he uses it when engaged
in literary production. When he writes poetry, he is in the habit of
sitting in an arm-chair, supporting a lap-board on his knee, which holds
the paper; in this position he pens his lyrics. He imagines that he is
more at liberty in this posture than when behind a writing desk.
Ordinarily he writes with great ease, but sometimes the composition of a
stirring chapter so mercilessly excites him that great bea