uck me as most suitable, cut it out, and pasted it in
the scrap-book. Now came the chief literary exercise of my task. I had
to go carefully through the passage, changing the names of the places
and people, and making a few necessary substitutions, _e.g._,
"The cuckoo was calling, and the dove cooing from the neighbouring
woodland," would stand in my version "The cuckoo was cuckooing, and
the dove calling from the adjacent thicket," while a sky described
as "azure" in the original, would figure as "lapis lazuli," or, even
blue.

The introduction safely engineered, I took another novelette from the
pile, and holding it firmly in the left hand, I grasped the scissors
with the thumb and forefinger of the right, cut three or four extracts
at random, of rather more than half a column in length, and pasted
these in the album, leaving about space enough for a couple of pages
of three-volume novel, between each section.

Thus I dealt with my twelve novelettes, and then went through them
again, and even again. Then the hard work began. I had to draw up
a list of names of my own, and then to go carefully through the
extracts, assigning the speeches to the best of my ability to the
most suitable of my own characters. This, however, was infinitely
less trouble than inventing dialogue, a process for which I always
entertained an insuperable aversion. I was also confronted at times by
adventures in my extracts which were quite unsuited for the novel with
a purpose, which, according to the justest canons, should never get
beyond a sprained ankle; and even that has to be handled with the
greatest discretion--generally by the wavering curate. So I had in
several places to tone down precipices, stay the inflowing tide with
more success than King CANUTE, and stop runaway horses before they had
excited alarm in their fair riders, or brought the discarded lover out
into the road, saying in a tone of quiet command, "Stop! This cannot
be allowed to go any farther."

Next, through the kindness of a friend, who was a householder, I
procured a reading ticket for the British Museum Library, and from the
writings of HERBERT SPENCER, HUXLEY, EMERSON, MATTHEW ARNOLD,
RUSKIN, Dr. MOMERIE, and Mr. WALTER PATER, and largely from the
more pretentious Reviews and Magazines, I made copious and tolerably
bewildering extracts, which I apportioned among the vacant spaces in
my story, with more regard to the length than to the circumstances. I
next went c