Does the public realize what it is, I wonder, to exercise this brain-work day by day, and often also night by night, week after week, month after month, year after year? A book is put into the hands of a reading man--or say a woman, if you will--and he devours it with ardour or coolness, more or less of either as the case may be, and makes his comments afterwards with complaisance, and says the book is a nice book, and seems almost to think it has been brought out for his special delectation. But does he ever cast a reflection on the toil that book has cost the writer? Does he look up to him with even a _thought_ of gratitude? Generally speaking, no. In the midst, perhaps, of very adverse circumstances, of long-continued sickness, of headache, heartache, many aches; when the inward spirit is fainting at life's bitter troubles, and it would seem in vain to struggle more, the labour must yet be done. Look at Hamish Channing--his is no ideal case. His day's work over, he got to his work--the night's--and wrote on, until his mind and body were alike weary. While others played, he toiled; when others were abroad at their banquetings and revellings, idling away their hours in what the world calls society, and Gerald Yorke making one amidst them, he was shut up in his room, labouring on persistently. And this was his reward! The best energies of his power and intellect had Hamish Channing given to the book: the great gift of genius, which had certainly been bestowed largely upon him, was exercised and brought to bear. No merit to him for that; he could not help exercising it. It appeared to him, this writing for his fellow men, to be the one special end for which he was sent into the world--where every man has his appointed and peculiar aptitude for someone calling or duty, though it happens that a vast many never find out their own until too late. A man reared, as had been James Channing, to good; anxious to live here in the single-minded fulfilment of every duty, using the world only as a passage to a better, can but write as a responsible agent; whether he may be working at a religious tract or a story of fiction, he does it as to his Creator, imploring day by day that he may be helped in it. Had Hamish been required to write without that sense of responsibility upon him, he would have put aside his pen. And the disappointment! the rude, pitiless, condemning shock! It might be that such was necessary; that it had been sent direct from heaven. The least sinful man on earth may have need of such discipline.