e grows older he finds it wiser to throw his work upon morning
hours. If he can spend the afternoon, or even the evening, in the open
air, his chances of sleep are better. The evening occupation, according
to me, should be light and pleasant, as music, a novel, reading aloud,
conversation, the theatre, or watching the stars from the piazza. Of
course, different men make and need different rules. I take nine hours
for sleep in every twenty-four, and do not object to ten.

"I accepted very early in life Bulwer's estimate that three hours a day
is as large an average of desk work as a man of letters should try for.
I have, in old newspaper days, written for twelve consecutive hours; but
this is only a _tour de force_, and in the long run you waste strength
if you do not hold every day quite closely to the average.

"As men live, with the telegraph and the telephone interrupting when
they choose, and this fool and that coming in when they choose to say,
'I do not want to interrupt you; I will only take a moment,' the great
difficulty is to hold your three hours without a break. If a man has
broken my mirror, I do not thank him for leaving the pieces next each
other; he has spoiled it, and he may carry them ten miles apart if he
chooses. So, if a fool comes in and breaks my time in two, he may stay
if he wants to; he is none the less a fool. What I want for work is
unbroken time. This is best secured early in the morning.

"I dislike early rising as much as any man, nor do I believe there is
any moral merit in it, as the children's books pretend; but to secure an
unbroken hour, or even less, I like to be at my desk before breakfast.
As long before as possible I have a cup of coffee and a soda biscuit
brought me there, and in the thirty to sixty minutes which follow before
breakfast, I like to start the work of the day. If you rise at a quarter
past six, there will be comparatively few map pedlers, or book agents,
or secretaries of charities, or jailbirds, who will call before eight.
The hour from 6.30 to 7.30 is that of which you are most sure. Even the
mother-in-law or the mother of your wife's sister's husband does not
come then to say that she should like some light work with a large
salary as matron in an institution where there is nothing to do.

"I believe in breakfast very thoroughly, and in having a good breakfast.
I have lived in Paris a month at a time and detest the French practice
of substituting for breakfast