“No doubt,” said the Devil; “but what I particularly desire to point out to you is a man whom you will see in his shirt-sleeves, seated upon a swivel-chair and writing away for dear life, matter which will appear to-morrow in the _Morning Post_.” “Well,” said the Student, “what of that?” “Can you guess what he is writing?” asked Asmodeus. “That I am quite unable to do,” said the Student. “It is,” said the Devil, “a series of satirical remarks upon the frailties and follies of others--and yet he is a journalist!” The Death of the Comic Author A Comic Author of deserved repute was lodging at the beginning of this month in a house with broken windows, in a court off the Gray’s Inn Road. He had undertaken to produce a piece of Humorous Fiction to the length of 75,000 words. The Comic Author, a man of experience (for this was his forty-seventh book), had sat down to begin his task. He calculated how long it would last him. He was good for 1500 words a day, if they were short words, and even when doom or accident compelled him to the use of long ones he could manage from 1163 to 1247. The specification was lucid and simple. There was to be nothing in the work that could offend the tenderness of the patriot nor the ease of good manners, let alone the canons of decency and right living. A powerful love interest which he was compelled under Clause VII of his contract to introduce immediately after each of the wittiest passages had been deftly woven into the fabric, and (as was clearly laid down in Clause IX) no matter already published might appear in those virgin pages. If any did so, be sure it was so veiled by the tranposition of phrases and other slight changes of manner as to escape the publisher’s eye. So far so good. But upon the 13th of August, a day of great beauty, but of excessive heat, the Comic Author, sitting at his desk, was struck by Apollo, the God and patron of literary men. It was the custom of the Comic Author, who was a teetotaler and a vegetarian, to wear a soft shirt entirely made of wool and devoid of a collar, which ornament, he was assured by Members of the Faculty, exercised a prejudicial effect upon the health. It was equally his custom to compose his famous periods with his back turned to the light. This habit he had also adopted at the dictation of the Faculty, who had proved to him beyond possibility of refutation that the human eye is damaged by nothing more than by reading or writing with one’s face towards the window. With his back, therefore, to the window in his room (it was unbroken), it was the Comic Artist’s wont to sit at a plain and dirty small deal table and express his mind upon paper, his head reposing upon his left hand, his fountain pen grasped firmly in his right, and his lips and tongue following the movement of his nib as it slowly crawled over the page before him.