crust. Later still, when an accident and crutches put this delightful
method of travelling out of the question, the summer-house (in a
blizzard I delighted in the name) was moved up beside my father's study.
I have, in fact, always had an out-of-door study, apart from the house I
lived in, and have come to look upon it as quite a necessity; so that we
have carried on the custom in our Gloucester house. We heartily
recommend it to all people who live by their brains and pens. The
incessant trotting to and fro on little errands is a wholesome thing.
Proof-sheets, empty ink-stands, dried-up mucilage, yawning wood-boxes,
wet feet, missing scissors, unfilled kerosene lamps, untimely thirst, or
unromantic lunches, the morning mail, and the dinner-bell, and the
orders of one's pet dog--all are so many imperious summonses to breathe
the tingling air and stir the blood and muscle.

Be as uncomfortable or as cross about it as you choose, an out-of-door
study is sure to prove your best friend. You become a species of
literary tramp, and absorb something of the tramp's hygiene. It is
impossible to be "cooped" at your desk, if you have to cross a garden or
a lawn thirty times a day to get to it. And what reporter can reach that
sweet seclusion across the distant housemaid's wily and experienced art?
What autograph or lion hunter can ruin your best chapter by bombardment
in mid-morning?

In the farm-house study I remember one of my earliest callers from the
publishing world, that seems always to stand with clawing fingers
demanding copy of the people least able to give it. He was an emissary
from the "Youth's Companion," who threatened or cajoled me into a vow to
supply him with a certain number of stories. My private suspicion is
that I have just about at this present time completed my share in that
ancient bargain, so patient and long-suffering has this pleasant paper