lassified (for this writer used to
sneer at the learned men who say, "I will look among my papers for it;"
he held that every written scrap ought either to be burned, or pasted
into a classified guard-book, where it could be found by consulting the
index); five things like bankers' bill-books, into whose several
compartments MS. notes and newspaper cuttings were thrown, as a
preliminary toward classification in books.

Underneath the table was a formidable array of note-books, standing
upright, and labeled on their backs. There were about twenty large
folios of classified facts, ideas, and pictures--for the very wood-cuts
were all indexed and classified on the plan of a tradesman's ledger;
there was also the receipt-book of the year, treated on the same plan.
Receipts on a file would not do for this romantic creature. If a
tradesman brought a bill, he must be able to turn to that tradesman's
name in a book, and prove in a moment whether it had been paid or not.
Then there was a collection of solid quartos, and of smaller folio
guard-books called Indexes. There was "Index rerum et journalium"--
"Index rerum et librorum,"--"Index rerum et hominum," and a lot more;
indeed, so many that, by way of climax, there was a fat folio ledger
entitled "Index ad Indices."

By the side of the table were six or seven thick pasteboard cards, each
about the size of a large portfolio, and on these the author's notes
and extracts were collected from all his repertories into something
like a focus for a present purpose. He was writing a novel based on
facts; facts, incidents, living dialogue, pictures, reflections,
situations, were all on these cards to choose from, and arranged in
headed columns; and some portions of the work he was writing on this
basis of imagination and drudgery lay on the table in two forms, his
own writing, and his secretary's copy thereof, the latter corrected for
the press. This copy was half margin, and so provided for additions and
improvements; but for one addition there were ten excisions, great and
small. Lady Bassett had just time to take in the beauty and artistic
character of the place, and to realize the appalling drudgery that
stamped it a workshop, when the author, who had dashed into his garden
for a moment's recreation, came to the window, and furnished contrast
No. 3. For he looked neither like a poet nor a drudge, but a great fat
country farmer. He was rather tall, very portly, smallish head,
common