He never writes; he dictates. In his early days he dictated to his wife, but in recent years he has employed a stenographer. At any appointed hour in the morning the young woman trips downstairs from the room at the top of the house to which she and her noisy typewriter have been banished, and if the author have his subject well in mind he delivers one thousand five hundred words before the morning is over. From this first draft the secretary makes the draft for the printer, which seldom is revised. The fact is, Stockton shapes his delightful stories in his mind as effectively as most other authors shape theirs on paper; and, therefore, when a story has been dictated, he is done with it. Mrs. Stockton, of whom we spoke as his first amanuensis, was Miss Marian E. Tuttle of Amelia County, Virginia, visits to whose home gave the novelist the impressions of negro life which he has described so felicitously. At present the Stocktons live near Charlestown, West Virginia. The estate, named Claymont, comprises one hundred and fifty acres of a wide-spreading piece of land once owned by Washington. The house is said to have been planned by the first President himself. At any rate, it was built by the immortal patriot's grandnephew, and it takes its name from the Washington homestead in England. Very appropriately the edition of Mr. Stockton's works has been given the title of Shenandoah. Personally the fanciful story-teller is small, spare, and shy. His is an elusive personality. "A personality more winsome and delightful," says one of his friends, "it would be difficult to find. It is a small man that sits before you, a keen-eyed man, whose eyes you know miss nothing, a man whose mustache is iron-gray and whose hair is almost white. His photographs give no hint of the man; they do not even mirror his personal appearance. Nothing save a talk with him gives you that." Another friend has said: "The big dark eyes, full of patient, weary expression, are luminous; the mouth close and discouraged, expands into smiling curves, sweet and sympathetic; the whole soul is in the face, and from head to foot, Frank Stockton is the genial responsive man. It is like a brilliant burst of sunshine following a cloud, suddenly and unexpectedly, and therefore more delicious in surprise and beauty." Everyone under this charmer's spell will, we are sure, say with Edmund Clarence Stedman: