I do not use a string to help me write or speak, but I must have its equivalent.  I must have my paper and pen or pencil before me to set my thoughts flowing in such form that they can be written continuously.  There have been lawyers who could think out their whole argument in connected order without a single note.  There are authors,—­and I think there are many,—­who can compose and finish off a poem or a story without writing a word of it until, when the proper time comes, they copy what they carry in their heads.  I have been told that Sir Edwin Arnold thought out his beautiful “Light of Asia” in this way.

I find the great charm of writing consists in its surprises.  When one is in the receptive attitude of mind, the thoughts which are sprung upon him, the images which flash through his—­consciousness, are a delight and an excitement.  I am impatient of every hindrance in setting down my thoughts,—­of a pen that will not write, of ink that will not flow, of paper that will not receive the ink.  And here let me pay the tribute which I owe to one of the humblest but most serviceable of my assistants, especially in poetical composition.  Nothing seems more prosaic than the stylographic pen.  It deprives the handwriting of its beauty, and to some extent of its individual character.  The brutal communism of the letters it forms covers the page it fills with the most uniformly uninteresting characters.  But, abuse it as much as you choose, there is nothing like it for the poet, for the imaginative writer.  Many a fine flow of thought has been checked, perhaps arrested, by the ill behavior of a goose-quill.  Many an idea has escaped while the author was dipping his pen in the inkstand.  But with the stylographic pen, in the hands of one who knows how to care for it and how to use it, unbroken rhythms and harmonious cadences are the natural products of the unimpeded flow of the fluid which is the vehicle of the author’s thoughts and fancies.  So much for my debt of gratitude to the humble stylographic pen.  It does not furnish the proper medium for the correspondence of intimates, who wish to see as much of their friends’ personality as their handwriting can hold,—­still less for the impassioned interchange of sentiments between lovers; but in writing for the press its use is open to no objection.  Its movement over the paper is like the flight of a swallow, while the quill pen and the steel pen and the gold pen are all taking short, laborious journeys, and stopping to drink every few minutes.

A chief pleasure which the author of novels and stories experiences is that of becoming acquainted with the characters be draws.  It is perfectly true that his characters must, in the nature of things, have more or less of himself in their composition.  If I should seek an exemplification of this in the person of any of my Teacups, I should find it most readily in the one whom I have called Number Seven, the one with the squinting brain.  I think that