there is the tragic story of Mr. R.L.  HITCHENS, who, being engaged to write an article against time, sent out for a stenographer, who on arrival proved to be a man with a large black beard of so sinister an aspect that Mr. HICHINS was forced to dismiss him and write the article in his own hand.  Yet Mr. HICHENSis not easily put off, for we learn that he finds he works best in big hotels and not, as we might have guessed, in the sequestered tranquillity of a minaret.

To some writers solitude is the true school of genius.  Yet Sir LEWIS MORRIS found some of his happiest thoughts come to him while travelling in the underground, while Mr. W.B.  YEATS records a similar experience as the result of a journey on the top of a tram-car.  Your advanced modernists, with MARINETTI at their head, find their best stimulus to creative effort in the clang and clatter of machinery. per contra, to return to The Daily Graphic, Mrs. C.N.  WILLIAMSON must have pretty things to look at “in business hours.”  But the happiest of all our authors is Madame ALBANESI, who “finds her brain-spur in a blank sheet of paper, and not the ghost of an idea what she is going to write about.”  Less fortunate writers labour assiduously only to leave the minds of their readers a blank, without the ghost of an idea of what the author has been writing about.

It is a pity that Mr. W.L.  GEORGE, in his interesting survey of modern writers of fiction in the English Review, has told us nothing about the methods of the “Neo-Victorians” and “Semi-Victorians,” the “Edwardians” and “belated Edwardians,” and the “Georgians” and “Neo-Georgians.”  With all these classes he deals faithfully.  But his criticism is purely literary.  He fails to tell us the things that every reader wants to know.  It is all very well to say that the neo-Georgians “paint in ink,” but he ought to have mentioned whether it is green or red.  Does Miss DOROTHY RICHARDSON dictate to the sound of trumpets, garbed in crimson trouserloons?  Does Mr. ARNOLD BENNETT cantillate his “copy” into the horn of a graphophone or use a motor-stylus?  Does Mr. SIEGRIED SASSOON beat his breast with one hand while he plays the loud bassoon with the other?  Does Mr. ALEC WAUGH use sermon-paper or foolscap?  Does Mr. ALDOUS HUXLEY keep a tame gorilla?  These are the really illuminating details that we hunger for.  Without them it is impossible to appreciate the artistry of our young Masters.  Mr. W.L.  GEORGE has given us a glimpse of the working of their brains; let him now reveal to us the secrets of their workshops.

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[Illustration:  “THERE’S THAT DASHED BULL OF YOURS IN MY FIELD AGAIN!  ONE OF THSES DAYS I’LL—­I’LL—­WRING ITS CONFOUNDED NECK!”

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OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(By Mr. Punch’s Staff of Learned Clerks.)