re have been lawyers who could think out their whole argument in
connected order without a single note. There are authors,--and I think
there are many,--who can compose and finish off a poem or a story
without writing a word of it until, when the proper time comes, they
copy what they carry in their heads. I have been told that Sir Edwin
Arnold thought out his beautiful "Light of Asia" in this way.

I find the great charm of writing consists in its surprises. When one
is in the receptive attitude of mind, the thoughts which are sprung upon
him, the images which flash through his--consciousness, are a delight
and an excitement. I am impatient of every hindrance in setting down my
thoughts,--of a pen that will not write, of ink that will not flow, of
paper that will not receive the ink. And here let me pay the tribute
which I owe to one of the humblest but most serviceable of my
assistants, especially in poetical composition. Nothing seems more
prosaic than the stylographic pen. It deprives the handwriting of its
beauty, and to some extent of its individual character. The brutal
communism of the letters it forms covers the page it fills with the most
uniformly uninteresting characters. But, abuse it as much as you choose,
there is nothing like it for the poet, for the imaginative writer. Many
a fine flow of thought has been checked, perhaps arrested, by the ill
behavior of a goose-quill. Many an idea has escaped while the author was
dipping his pen in the inkstand. But with the stylographic pen, in the
hands of one who knows how to care for it and how to use it, unbroken
rhythms and harmonious cadences are the natural products of the
unimpeded flow of the fluid which is the vehicle of the author's
thoughts and fancies. So much for my debt of gratitude to the humble
stylographic pen. It does not furnish the proper medium for the
correspondence of intimates, who wish to see as much of their friends'
personality as their handwriting can hold,--still less for the
impassioned interchange of sentiments between lovers; but in writing for
the press its use is open to no objection. Its movement over the paper
is like the flight of a swallow, while the quill pen and the steel pen
and the gold pen are all taking short, laborious journeys, and stopping
to drink every few minutes.

A chief pleasure which the author of novels and stories experiences
is that of becoming acquainted with the characters be draws. It is
perfectly true that