THE LABOR OF AUTHORSHIP.

David Livingstone said: "Those who have never carried a book through the press can form no idea of the amount of toil it involves. The process has increased my respect for authors a thousand-fold. I think I would rather cross the African continent again than undertake to write another book."

"For the statistics of the negro population of South America alone," says Robert Dale Owen, "I examined more than a hundred and fifty volumes."

Another author tells us that he wrote paragraphs and whole pages of his book as many as fifty times.

It is said of one of Longfellow's poems that it was written in four weeks, but that he spent six months in correcting and cutting it down.

Bulwer declared that he had rewritten some of his briefer productions as many as eight or nine times before their publication. One of Tennyson's pieces was rewritten fifty times. John Owen was twenty years on his "Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews;" Gibbon on his "Decline and Fall," twenty years; and Adam Clark on his "Commentary," twenty-six years. Carlyle spent fifteen years on his "Frederick the Great."

A great deal of time is consumed in reading before some books are prepared. George Eliot read one thousand books before she wrote "Daniel Deronda." Alison read two thousand before he completed his history. It is said of another that he read twenty thousand and wrote only two books.