cient to make both ends meet, but he used to say it was adequate to
the wants of a poet. He declared that wealth and luxury would destroy
his working force. The poet once wrote: "Twelve years ago I came to
Camden to die; but every day I went into the country, and, naked, bathed
in sunshine, lived with the birds and the squirrels, and played in the
water with the fishes. I recovered my health from Nature. Strange how
she carries us through periods of infirmity, into the realms of freedom
and health."

In contradistinction to the majority of authors, Hermann Herberg, German
novelist and journalist, drives the pen at night. He invariably makes
an outline of his work to start with, and when he is engaged in writing,
he sips coffee and smokes. To him literary work is a holiday task; yet
he never writes unless he is in the proper frame of mind, spending on
the average three hours a day at the writing table.

The method of Louisa May Alcott was a very simple one. She never had a
study; and an old atlas on her knee was all the desk she cared for. Any
pen, any paper, any ink, and any quiet place contented her. Years ago,
when necessity drove her hard, she used to sit for fourteen hours at her
work, doing about thirty pages a day, and scarcely tasting food until
her daily task was done. She never copied. When the idea was in her
head, it flowed into words faster than she could write them down, and
she seldom altered a line. She had the wonderful power of carrying a
dozen plots for months in her mind, thinking them over whenever she was
in the mood, to be developed at the proper time. Sometimes she carried a
plan thus for years. Often, in the dead of night, she lay awake and
planned whole chapters, word for word, and when daylight came she had
only to write them down. She never composed in the evening. She
maintained that work in the early hours gives morning freshness to both
brain and pen, and that rest at night is a necessity for all who do
brain work. She never used stimulants of any kind. She ate sparingly
when writing, and only the simplest food, holding that one cannot preach
temperance if one does not practice it. Miss Alcott affirmed that the
quality of an author's work depends much on his habits, and that sane,
wholesome, happy, and wise books must come from clean lives,
well-balanced minds, spiritual insight, and a desire to do good.

Very few of the stories of the author of "Little Women" were written in
Concord, her