Thomas County cat. [volume] (Colby, Kan.) 1885-1891, 1891-01-01
AUTHORS AT WORK.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Writes of Theii
Habits and Pleasures.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Writes of TheiI
| Habits and Pleasures.
Writers and speakers have theil
idiosyncrasies, their habits, their tricks,
II you had rather call them So as to
their ways of writing and speaking
There is very old and familiar story,
accompanied by a feeble Jest, which
most readers may probably enough
have met with In Joe Miller or else
where. 1t is that of lawyer who
could never make an argument without
having a piece of thread to work upon
with his fingers while he was pleading.
Some one stole it from him ore day, and
he could not get on at all with his
speech-he had lost the thread of his
discourse, as the story had it. Now
this is what 1, myself, once saw. It
was at meeting where certain grave
matters were debated in an assembly of
professional men. A speaker, whom
1 never heard before or since, got up
and made long and forcibe argument.
did not think he was a lawyer, but
he spoke as if he had been trained to
talk to juries. He held long string in
one hand, which he drew through the
other haId necessarily, as he spoke,
just as a shoemaker performs the mo
ton of waxing his thread. He appeared
to be dependent on this motion. The
physiological significance of the fact
l suppose to be that the flow of what
We call the nervous current from the
thinking center to the organs of speech
was rendered freer and easier by the
establishment of simultaneous collat-
eral nervous current to the set of mus
cles concerned in the action 1 have de-
scribed.
l do not use string to help me
write or speak, but l must have its
equivalent. l 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 single note. There are
authors-and think there are many
who can compose and finish off poem
or story without writing a word of it
until, when the proper time comes,
they copy What they carry in their
heads. 1 have been told that Sir Ed
win Arnold thought out his beautiful
Light of Asia" in this way.
find the great charm of writing con-
sists 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 delight and an ex-
element. l 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.
A chief pleasure which the author of
novels and stories experiences is that of
becoming acquainted with his char
acters as he goes on. They are at first
mere embryos, outlines of distinct per-
sonalities. By and by, if they have any
organic cohesion, they begin to assert
themselves. They can say and do
such and such things; such and such
other things they cannot and must not
say or do. The story-writer's and play
writer's danger is that they will get
their characters mixed, and make A
say what B ought to have said. The
stronger his imaginative faculty, the
less liable will the writer be to this
fault; but not even Shakspeare's power
of throwing himself into his characters
prevents many of his different person
ages from talking philosophy in the
same strain and in style common to
them all.-Oliuer ITef1dell Holmes TN
atlantic Monthly.