THE DYING GAG 245 “ONLY A TYPE-WRITER” 251 THE CULTURE BUBBLE IN OURTOWN 260 SOME THOUGHTS ON THE CONSTRUCTION AND PRESERVATION OF JOKES 275 MCCLURE’S MODEL VILLAGE FOR LITERARY TOILERS 299 ARRIVAL OF THE SCOTCH AUTHORS AT MCCLURE’S LITERARY COLONY 307 THE CANNING OF PERISHABLE LITERATURE 316 LITERARY LEAVES BY MANACLED HANDS 323 MCCLURE’S BIRTHDAY AT SYNDICATE VILLAGE 331 LITERATURE BY PRISON CONTRACT LABOR 340 CHRISTMAS EVE AT THE SYNDICATE VILLAGE 351 THE LITERARY SHOP CHAPTER I. IN AN OLD GARRET. I am lying at full length on a broken-down haircloth sofa that has been placed near the cobwebby window of an old garret in a country farm-house. It is near the close of a rainy day, and all the afternoon I have listened to the pattering of the heavy drops on the shingled roof, the rustling of the slender locust-trees and the creaking of their branches as the wind moves them. There are pop-corn ears drying on the floor of this old garret; its solid rafters are festooned with dried apples and white onions. Odd bits of furniture, and two or three hair trunks bearing initials made with brass-headed nails, are scattered about the room, and from where I lie I can see a Franklin stove, a pair of brass andirons, and one of those queer wooden-wheeled clocks that used to be made in Connecticut years ago, and which are a fitting monument to the ingenuity of the Yankee race. Every article in the room is carefully treasured, and none is held in more tender regard than are certain square, dust-covered packages of what might be old newspapers that are piled up in big heaps beside the old chairs and tables. One of these bundles lies on the floor beside my sofa, with its string untied and its contents scattered carelessly about. Look down and you will see that it contains copies of the _New York Ledger_, of a year that was one of the early seventies, and which have been religiously preserved, together with fully twoscore of other similar bundles, by the excellent people who dwell in the house.