s while engaged in the mechanical part of an
author's work. His door was always open to the children; they burst in
freely without any signal, and he always looked up with a smile of
welcome; and he declared that he often could think to most purpose when
there was a clatter of little voices around him. His voluminous works,
which he commenced to publish late in life, do not indicate that he
underwent a "muddling" process.

Johnson used to assert that a man could write just as well at one time
as another, and as well in one place as another, if he would only set
himself doggedly about it.

Dr. Channing's habits of labor when at home in Boston are thus
described. "The sun is just rising, and the fires are scarcely lighted,
when, with a rapid step, Dr. Channing enters his study. He has been
watchful during many hours, his brain teeming, and under the excitement
of his morning bath he longs to use the earliest hours for work.... His
first act is to write down the thoughts which have been given in his
vigils; next he reads a chapter or more in Griesbach's edition of the
Greek Testament, and, after a quick glance over the newspapers of the
day, he takes his light repast. Morning prayers follow, and then he
retires to his study-table. If he is reading, you will at once notice
this peculiarity, that he studies pen in hand, and that his book is
crowded with folded sheets of paper, which continually multiply as
trains of thought are suggested. These notes are rarely quotations, but
chiefly questions and answers, qualifications, condensed statements,
germs of interesting views; and when the volume is finished, they are
carefully selected, arranged, and under distinct heads placed among
other papers in a secretary. If he is writing, unless making preparation
for the pulpit or for publication, the same process of accumulating
notes is continued, which, at the end of each day or week, are filed.
The interior of the secretary is filled with heaps of similar notes,
arranged in order, with titles over each compartment. When a topic is to
be treated at length in a sermon or essay, these notes are consulted,
reviewed, and arranged. He first draws up a skeleton of his subject,
selecting with special care and making prominent the central principle
that gives it unity, and from which branch forth correlative
considerations. Until perfectly clear in his own mind as to the
essential truth of this main view, he cannot proceed. Questions are
r