entire freedom as to the sources of what may be said over the teacups. I
have not told how many cups are commonly on the board, but by using the
plural I have implied that there is at least one other talker or listener
beside myself, and for all that appears there may be a dozen. There will
be no regulation length to my reports,--no attempt to make out a certain
number of pages. I have no contract to fill so many columns, no pledge
to contribute so many numbers. I can stop on this first page if I do not
care to say anything more, and let this article stand by itself if so
minded. What a sense of freedom it gives not to write by the yard or the
column!

When one writes for an English review or magazine at so many guineas a
sheet, the temptation is very great to make one's contribution cover as
many sheets as possible. We all know the metallic taste of articles
written under this powerful stimulus. If Bacon's Essays had been
furnished by a modern hand to the "Quarterly Review" at fifty guineas a
sheet, what a great book it would have taken to hold them!

The first thing which suggests itself to me, as I contemplate my slight
project, is the liability of repeating in the evening what I may have
said in the morning in one form or another, and printed in these or other
pages. When it suddenly flashes into the consciousness of a writer who
had been long before the public, "Why, I have said all that once or
oftener in my books or essays, and here it is again; the same old
thought, the same old image, the same old story!" it irritates him, and
is likely to stir up the monosyllables of his unsanctified vocabulary.
He sees in imagination a thousand readers, smiling or yawning as they say
to themselves, "We have had all that before," and turn to another
writer's performance for something not quite so stale and superfluous.
This is what the writer says to himself about the reader.