There are persons who like to have others around them, moving about, while they write. And people there are who find it necessary to lock themselves up, and can have no one else in the room. Though in some cases such persons would not mind the bang of a bass-drum just the other side of the door. I know a man who had an office in lower Manhattan where for a considerable period just outside his open window a steam riveter was at work. Terrific it was, the way the noise of this machine smashed the air into tiny particles like a shower of broken glass. Callers who found this man contentedly writing would hold their ears and look at him with their hair on end from amazement. A man of highly nervous organism, too; one who would be very upset if his typewriter had a pale ribbon, or be spoiled for the day if he couldn't find the right pen--worn over just to his liking at the point. But, after the first day or so, Mr. Soaping (name of the gentleman I'm telling you about) I know didn't hear the riveter at all. Then those exist, Royal Cortissoz is one, who, dictating all they do, can have in the room while they work only their secretary. Frequently is it the case, too, that none but the amanuensis to whom they have been long accustomed will do. A stranger throws 'em completely off. A novelist I know, the writer of a very good style, who becomes very much fussed up, and is practically destroyed, when he suspects a secretary of giving critical attention to the manner of his prose. An embarrassing thing about most stenographers, I have found, is that they are greatly grieved if you say "'em" for "them," or anything like that. Or else they won't let you do such things at all, and edit everything pleasant back into perfectly good copy-book English. Some of them won't even let you split an infinitive.