e of picturesque
disorder. The portrait of his wife, in various sizes, adorns the space
on the walls not taken up by the books. The top of his writing-table is
full of bric-a-brac, which leaves only sufficient room for the quarto
paper upon which he pens his entertaining romances. He writes with
little, fine pens, of so good a workmanship that he is enabled to write
a four-volume novel with one pen. He always makes use of violet ink, to
which he is so accustomed that he becomes perplexed when compelled,
outside of his house, to resort to ink of another color. He claims that
thoughts are not forthcoming when he writes with any other ink. When
violet ink is not within reach, he prefers to write with a lead pencil,
but he does so only when composing short stories and essays. For the
composition of his romances, which generally fill from one to five
volumes when printed, violet ink is indispensable. He rarely corrects
his manuscripts, and they generally go to the printer as they were
originally composed; they are written in a plain, legible hand; and are
what one of the typographic fraternity would call "beautiful copy." One
of the corners of his writing-desk holds a miniature library, consisting
of neatly-bound note-books, which contain the outlines of his novels as
they originated in his mind. When he has once begun a romance, he keeps
right on till he puts down the final period; that is, he writes day by
day till the novel is completed. Jokai says: "It often happens that I
surround my hero with dangers, that enemies arise on all sides, and
escape seems impossible. Then I often say to myself: 'I wonder how the
fellow will get out of the scrape?'"

In his home, at Hartford, Conn., Mark Twain's workshop is in his
billiard-room, at the top of the house, and when he grows tired of
pushing the pen he rises and eases his muscles by doing some scientific
strokes with the cue. He is a hard worker, and, like Trollope, believes
that there is nothing like a piece of shoemaker's wax on the seat of
one's chair to encourage good literary work. Ordinarily he has a fixed
amount of writing for each day's duty. He rewrites many of his chapters,
and some of them have been scratched out and interlined again and again.

Robert Waldmueller, a leading German novelist, who writes under the
pseudonym of "Charles Eduard Duboc," works mostly from eight, nine, or
ten o'clock in the morning until two o'clock in the afternoon, but never
writes at nig