At breakfast, when you see the post-bag brought in, you understand why he tries to get his bit of writing done early.  The letters and parcels are piled in the study, and after breakfast, at which, as in old times, he reads his last-written passages—­how much more interesting they will always look to you in print!—­after breakfast he is closeted with an assistant, and they work through the heap.  Private friends, known by handwriting, he puts aside; most of the morning will go in answering them.  Business he talks over, and gives brief directions.  But the bulk of the correspondence is from strangers in all parts of the world—­admirers’ flattery; students’ questions; begging-letters for money, books, influence, advice, autographs, criticism on enclosed MS. or accompanying picture; remonstrance or abuse from dissatisfied readers, or people who object to his method of publication, or wish to convert him to their own religion.  And so the heap is gradually cleared, with the help of the waste-paper basket; the secretary’s work cut out, his own arranged; and by noon a long row of letters and envelopes have been set out to dry—­Mr. Ruskin uses no blotting-paper, and, as he dislikes the vulgar method of fastening envelopes, the secretary’s work will be to seal them all with red wax, and the seal with the motto “To-day” cut in the apex of a big specimen of chalcedony.

If you take, as many do, an interest in the minutiae of portrait painting, and think the picture more finished for its details, you may notice that he writes on the flat table, not on a desk; that he uses a cork penholder and a fine steel pen, though he is not at all a slave to his tools, and differs from others rather in the absence of the sine qua non from his conditions.  He can write anywhere, on anything, with anything; wants no pen-wiper, no special form of paper, or other “fad.”  Much of his work is written in bound notebooks, especially when he is abroad, to prevent the loss and disorder of multitudinous foolscap.  He generally makes a rough syllabus of his subject, in addition to copious notes and extracts from authorities, and then writes straight off; not without a noticeable hesitation and revision, even in his letters.  His rough copy is transcribed by an assistant, and he often does not see it again until it is in proof.[45]

[Footnote 45:  In later years he sometimes had his copy type-written.]

Printers’ proofs are always a trial, and he is glad to shift the work on to an assistant’s shoulders, such as Mr. Harrison was, who saw all his early works through the press.  But he is extremely particular about certain matters, such as the choice of type and arrangements of the page; though his taste does not coincide with that of the leaders of recent fashions.  Mr. Jowett (of Messrs. Hazell, Watson & Viney, Limited) said in Hazell’s Magazine for September; 1892, that Ruskin made the size of the page a careful study, though he adopted many varieties.