not a shorter lease of life than his fellow-creatures, since, in
addition to his hours of sleep (of which he ought by rights to have much
more than the usual proportion), he passes a large part of his sentient
being outside the pale of ordinary existence. The reference to sleep 'by
rights' may possibly suggest to the profane that the storyteller has a
claim to it on the ground of having induced slumber in his
fellow-creatures; but my meaning is that the mental wear and tear caused
by work of this kind is infinitely greater than that produced by mere
application even to abstruse studies (as any doctor will witness), and
requires a proportionate degree of recuperation.

I do not pretend to quote the experience (any more than the mode of
composition) of other writers--though with that of most of my brethren
and superiors in the craft I am well acquainted--but I am convinced that
to work the brain at night in the way of imagination is little short of
an act of suicide. Dr. Treichler's recent warnings upon this subject are
startling enough, even as addressed to students, but in their
application to poets and novelists they have far greater significance.
It may be said that journalists (whose writings, it is whispered, have a
close connection with fiction) always write in the 'small hours,' but
their mode of life is more or less shaped to meet their exceptional
requirements; whereas we storytellers live like other people (only more
purely), and if we consume the midnight oil, use perforce another system
of illumination also--we burn the candle at both ends. A great novelist
who adopted this baneful practice and indirectly lost his life by it
(through insomnia) notes what is very curious, that notwithstanding his
mind was so occupied, when awake, with the creatures of his imagination,
he never dreamt of them; which I think is also the general experience.
But he does not tell us for how many hours _before_ he went to sleep,
and tossed upon his restless pillow till far into the morning, he was