breakfast at my lodgings, that Mr. _Sackville_ had called to see me, and
was then waiting below. Very soon I heard a heavy tread on the stairs,
and then entered a tall, white-haired stranger, who held out his hand,
bowed profoundly, and with a most comical expression announced himself
as Mr. Sackville. Recognizing at once the face from published portraits,
I knew that my visitor was none other than Thackeray himself, who,
having heard the servant give the wrong name, determined to assume it on
this occasion. For years afterwards, when he would drop in unexpectedly,
both at home and abroad, he delighted to call himself Mr. Sackville,
until a certain Milesian waiter at the Tremont House addressed him as
Mr. Thack_uary_, when he adopted that name in preference to the other.

Questions are frequently asked as to the habits of thought and
composition of authors one has happened to know, as if an author's
friends were commonly invited to observe the growth of works he was by
and by to launch from the press. It is not customary for the doors of
the writer's work-shop to be thrown open, and for this reason it is all
the more interesting to notice, when it is possible, how an essay, a
history, a novel, or a poem is conceived, grows up, and is corrected for
publication. One would like very much to be informed how Shakespeare put
together the scenes of Hamlet or Macbeth, whether the subtile thought
accumulated easily on the page before him, or whether he struggled for
it with anxiety and distrust. We know that Milton troubled himself about
little matters of punctuation, and obliged the printer to take special
note of his requirements, scolding him roundly when he neglected his
instructions. We also know that Melanchthon was in his library hard at
work by two or three o'clock in the morning both in summer and winter,
and that Sir William Jones began his studies with the dawn.

The most popular female writer of America, whose great novel struck a