at free adventure, through eras and surroundings which were to him and me in nothing familiar.... So that eventually I came, by way of the British Linen Company's bank, and so past the lair of Tharagavverug, to the steel gate, to The Porte Resonant, of the Fortress Unvanquishable; and I am now upon the point of going in to cut off, for the third or fourth time, Gaznak's evil head. Yes, looking back, I can see that the last month has been fairly various and contenting. And I am convinced that I must owe all these happy adventurings to the charity of beneficent wizards rather than of mere writing persons. And I elect to think of each and every valid romantic novelist as a skilled sorcerer who, accompanied by a suitable cortège of readers, departs at will from the workaday world, to travel, eternally young and always comfortably opulent, upon the blessed way of wizardry which conducts him away from boredom, and enables him to wander footloose and at continuous unflagging adventure, in unfamiliar lands wherein, as Poictesme phrases it, almost anything is rather more than likely to happen. § 24 And I would like to think that every self-respecting novelist goes to his magicking in suitable estate, and follows high and approved old formulæ. In any event, so many persons have, at odd times, inquired about my own "methods" of composition that it seems well here to jot down what would appear to be a few of the more obvious rules of thumb. The novelist, then, most appropriately prologizes his evasion of common-sense--after of course performing the proper suffumigations of camphor and aloes and amber,--by writing his first chapter in a robe of white, with a triple collar of crystals and pearls and selenite. His diet upon this day will be fish. When there is fighting in manuscript, the writer may always advantageously, I believe, shift to a rust-colored robe adorned with amethysts, and having a belt and bracelets of steel,--clothed in which gear, he will while writing keep as near as circumstances permit to the chimney, favored by Mars. When he is about to kill anyone scriptorially, he will in mere self-protection put on a wreath of ash and cypress, and burn scammony and alum. He will likewise upon this day be careful to stint none of the functions of nature; and will circumspectly remember that he traffics with the wan and ashy overlord of the greater infortune.