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writer has never beheld. This requires, of course, both study and
judgment, but it can be done so as to deceive, if not the native, at
least the Englishman who has himself resided there. I never yet knew an
Australian who could be persuaded that the author of 'Never Too Late to
Mend' had not visited the underworld, or a sailor that he who wrote
'Hard Cash' had never been to sea. The fact is, information, concerning
which dull folks make so much fuss, can be attained by anybody who
chooses to spend his time that way; and by persons of intelligence (who
are not so solicitous to know how blacking is made) can be turned, in a
manner not dreamt of by cram-coaches, to really good account.

The general impression perhaps conveyed by the above remarks will be
that to those who go to work in the manner described--for many writers
of course have quite other processes--story-telling must be a mechanical
trade. Yet nothing can be farther from the fact. These preliminary
arrangements have the effect of so steeping the mind in the subject in
hand, that when the author begins his work he is already in a world
apart from his everyday one; the characters of his story people it; and
the events that occur to them are as material, so far as the writer is
concerned, as though they happened under his roof. Indeed, it is a
question for the metaphysician whether the professional story-teller has
not a shorter lease of life than his fellow-creatures, since, in
addition to his hours of sleep (of which he ought by rights to have much
more than the usual proportion), he passes a large part of his sentient
being outside the pale of ordinary existence. The reference to sleep 'by
rights' may possibly suggest to the profane that the storyteller has a
claim to it on the ground of having induced slumber in his
fellow-creatures; but my meaning is that the mental wear and tear caused
by work of this kind is infinitely greater than that produced by mere
application even to abstruse studies (as any doctor will witness), and
requires a proportionate degree of recuperation.

I do not pretend to quote the experience (any more than the mode of
composition) of other writers--though with that of most of my brethren
and superiors in the craft I am well acquainted--but I am convinced that
to work the brain at night in the way of imagination is little short of
an act of suicide. Dr. Treichler's recent warnings upon this subject are
startling enough, even as addre