hem, as a
little girl does for her doll,--nay, how many new outfits a single
sentence sometimes costs before it is presentable, till it seems at
last, like our army on the Potomac, as if it never could be thoroughly
clothed,--I certainly should never dare to venture into print, but for
the confirmed suspicion that the greatest writers have done even so. I
can hardly believe that there is any autograph in the world so precious
or instructive as that scrap of paper, still preserved at Ferrara, on
which Ariosto wrote in sixteen different revisions one of his most
famous stanzas. Do you know, my dear neophyte, how Balzac used to
compose? As a specimen of the labor that sometimes goes to make an
effective style, the process is worth recording. When Balzac had a new
work in view, he first spent weeks in studying from real life for it,
haunting the streets of Paris by day and night, note-book in hand. His
materials gained, he shut himself up till the book was written, perhaps
two months, absolutely excluding everybody but his publisher. He emerged
pale and thin, with the complete manuscript in his hand,--not only
written, but almost rewritten, so thoroughly was the original copy
altered, interlined, and rearranged. This strange production, almost
illegible, was sent to the unfortunate printers; with infinite
difficulty a proof-sheet was obtained, which, being sent to the author,
was presently returned in almost as hopeless a chaos of corrections as
the manuscript first submitted. Whole sentences were erased, others
transposed, everything modified. A second and a third followed, alike
torn to pieces by the ravenous pen of Balzac. The despairing printers
labored by turns, only the picked men of the office being equal to the
task, and they relieving each other at hourly intervals, as beyond
that time no one could endure the fatigue. At last, by the fourth
proof-sheet, the author too was wearied out, though not contented. "I
work ten hours out of the twenty-four," said he, "over the elaboration
of my unhappy style, and I am never satisfied, myself, when all is
done."

Do not complain that this scrupulousness is probably wasted, after all,
and that nobody knows. The public knows. People criticize higher than
they attain. When the Athenian audience hissed a public speaker for a
mispronunciation, it did not follow that any one of the malcontents
could pronounce as well as the orator. In our own lyceum-audiences there
may not be a ma