As a matter of fact, I have usually found that about the time a writer starts in surrounding himself with every luxury in the way of an aid to his work he never does very much with his swell equipment besides occasionally showing it off to admiring acquaintances. It is quite probable that the money he earned to pay for his elaborate study he earned by writing a play on the top of a barrel. I myself have worked in all sorts of places, ranging from a three-dollar-a-week hall bedroom to a studio library in a pent house in the Park Avenue section. During the most prolific years of my life most of my work was done at a desk in the living room of an apartment with two small boys playing about on the floor and crawling between my legs. It is, I suppose, because I have always had so much fun with my writing that the members of my family have never stood in any great awe of my labors, and I suppose the boys saw no good reason why I should try to keep an amusing game all to myself, and usually insisted on being let in on it. Edgar Wallace told me last year that he loved New York and always had a wonderful rest when he came here. It was, he said, the noisiest city in the world and the only place on earth where he couldn’t write. Personally I can write better in New York than I can anywhere else, and although I am afraid I demand more quiet and privacy as the years go past, I am still quite untroubled by anything less than a riveting machine. Some rather facetious remarks have been made about the volume of my production, but this same Edgar Wallace makes me look like a drone. When I am hard at work I turn out about four thousand words a day, usually in longhand, written with the softest and dirtiest lead pencil that a nickel can buy. Mr. Wallace tells me that on a good day he dictates ten thousand words. I know that twenty-three percent of all the novels sold in England last year were of his writing, and he calmly threw in three or four plays by way of good measure. Ever since I dined with him I have laughed with scorn at any one bold enough to insinuate that I write too much, and I have been filled with good resolutions.