notes and newspaper cuttings were thrown, as a
preliminary toward classification in books.
Underneath the table was a formidable array of note-books, standing
upright, and labeled on their backs. There were about twenty large
folios of classified facts, ideas, and pictures--for the very wood-cuts
were all indexed and classified on the plan of a tradesman's ledger;
there was also the receipt-book of the year, treated on the same plan.
Receipts on a file would not do for this romantic creature. If a
tradesman brought a bill, he must be able to turn to that tradesman's
name in a book, and prove in a moment whether it had been paid or not.
Then there was a collection of solid quartos, and of smaller folio
guard-books called Indexes. There was "Index rerum et journalium"--
"Index rerum et librorum,"--"Index rerum et hominum," and a lot more;
indeed, so many that, by way of climax, there was a fat folio ledger
entitled "Index ad Indices."
By the side of the table were six or seven thick pasteboard cards, each
about the size of a large portfolio, and on these the author's notes
and extracts were collected from all his repertories into something
like a focus for a present purpose. He was writing a novel based on
facts; facts, incidents, living dialogue, pictures, reflections,
situations, were all on these cards to choose from, and arranged in
headed columns; and some portions of the work he was writing on this
basis of imagination and drudgery lay on the table in two forms, his
own writing, and his secretary's copy thereof, the latter corrected for
the press.
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