heir apportioned hours of
literary labor; but a large proportion of the literary practitioners of
the age are connected, in some capacity or other, with the newspaper
press; they are the slaves of time, not its masters; and must bend
themselves to circumstances, however repugnant to the will. Late hours
are unfortunately a condition of press life. The sub-editors, the
summary writers, the reporters; the musical and theatrical critics, and
many of the leading-article writers are compelled to keep late hours.
Their work is not done till past--in many cases till _long_
past--midnight; and it can not be done at home. It is a very unhappy
condition of literary life that it so often compels night-work.
Night-work of this kind seems to demand a resource to stimulants; and
the exigencies of time and place compel a man to betake himself to the
most convenient tavern. Much that we read in the morning papers,
wondering at the rapidity with which important intelligence or
interesting criticism is laid before us, is written, after midnight, at
some contiguous tavern, or in the close atmosphere of a reporter's room,
which compels a subsequent resort to some house of nocturnal
entertainment. If, weary with work and rejoicing in the thought of its
accomplishment, the literary laborer, in the society perhaps of two or
three of his brethren, betakes himself to a convenient supper house, and
there spends on a single meal, what would keep himself and his family in
comfort throughout the next day, perhaps it is hardly just to judge him
too severely; at all events, it is right that we should regard the
suffering, and weigh the temptation. What to us, in many cases, "seems
vice may be but woe." It is hard to keep to this night-work and to live
an orderly life. If a man from choice, not from necessity, turns night
into day, and day into night (we have known literary men who have
willfully done so), we have very little pity for him. The shattered
nerves--the disorderly home--the neglected business--the accounts unkept
and the bills unpaid, which are the necessary results of nights of
excitement and days of languor, are then to be regarded as the
consequences not of the misfortunes, but the faults of the sufferer. It
is a wretched way of life any how.

Literary men are sad spendthrifts, not only of their money, but of
themselves. At an age when other men are in the possession of vigorous
faculties of mind and strength of body, they are often use