Mr. Hale is not reserved about himself in his books. But in his fictitious writings you must beware of taking him too literally. He hates to wear his heart upon his sleeve. When you imagine that at last he is standing before you _in propriâ personâ_--whish! he claps on his magic cap, with a thimbleful of fern-seed sewed in it, and fades from your sight or recognition. He has recently told us of his habits of work, and how he sleeps and eats. What he says goes far toward explaining how he can throw off such amazing quantities of work. A man who eats five times a day, sleeps nine hours (including, with tolerable regularity, an hour after dinner), and takes plenty of out-door exercise, can perform as much as half a dozen dyspeptic, half-starved night-moths. Mr. Hale, it seems, does his writing and thinking in the lump, working his way regularly by a dead lift of three hours a day--inclusive, often, of a half or a full hour’s bout before breakfast--the early work based upon a _Frühstück_ of coffee and biscuit. Another secret of his power to produce work is his habit of getting others, especially young people, to work for him. For at least thirteen years he has employed an amanuensis for a part of his writings. If he wishes to edit, in compact shape, certain hearty and relishing old narratives, he sets his young friends to reading for him, and by their joint labors the work is done. His “Family Flight” series of travels (which we are given to understand has been quite successful) is the joint work of himself and his traveled sister. In short, he takes all the help he can get, printed or personal, for whatever writing he has on hand. Mr. Hale takes his exercise chiefly by walking, or in the horse-cars, as business or professional duty calls him hither and thither. As a hunger-producer the average suburban horse-car line of Boston is scarcely excelled by a corduroy road or a mud avenue of New Orleans; and the bracing sea-air of the Boston Highlands adds its whet and stimulant.