This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1915 edition. Excerpt: ... in the morning should seldom be allowed to go loose, to molest the public. An author who writes when he is exhausted is very apt to furnish morbid ideas, at least ideas which do not have the right ring. The best writer is the best man. The best man, according to Emerson, is the best animal; the one who eats best and sleeps best. If one has genius, limitations are to be set upon his mental efforts--the limitations of physical well-being. If the genius works beyond his physical powers, the result produced is morbid, and its influence in the end very likely to be injurious. The genius then to be most useful is not to work beyond his physical strength. The man who acquires morbidly sensitized protoplasm in exchange for fortune or fame is making the sort of trade that a horse jockey would classify in terms peculiar to his manner of expression, and quite shocking in print. If a great fortune comes incidentally to a financial genius without injury to his health, it is well and proper. If it comes because a man is throwing himself into the bonfire he will leave sensitized protoplasm to his progeny, without benefits enough to compensate for the expenditure. If you gain fortune or fame at the expense of sensitizing your protoplasm the character of which will be willed to the children along with other entailments, and if children and relatives are to fight over the property, are you really entitled to credit for shrewdness and wisdom? Are you not to be considered as having exercised the determination of a dog swimming to get a stick that is going over a cataract? Authors and artists intense in their work are apt to labor for too long hours without regular nourishment or rest. I prefer authors who eat three meals a day, sleep eight hours and remain...