Note 23 — Common-place Books.

'Periodically I am addressed by two constant and somewhat exigeant classes of correspondents: the young gentlemen who wish me to give them a list of the works requisite to form a journalist's library; and, next, the esteemed individuals of both sexes and all ages who want me to tell them how to keep a commonplace-book. I have replied to both these questions over and over again; and to give yet another list of the books which I think would be useful to professional writers for the press would be to outrage the patience of my non-professional patrons. The recipe for keeping a commonplace-book may, however, it is to be hoped, be repeated without giving offence to any one. Here it is; and pray observe that I have had it printed in small type, in order that the susceptibilities of readers who want to be amused and do not require to be instructed may not be wounded:—Procure a blank book, strongly bound, big or little, according to the largeness or smallness of your handwriting. Let the book have an index. It will be better if the paper of the book were ruled. When in the course of your reading you come on a passage which strikes you as worthy of being common-placed, copy it legibly in your commonplace-book. Say that the passage is the following, from Bacon's Natural History: "So the beard is younger than the hair of the head, and doth, for the most part, wax hoary later." At the end of this passage inscribe a circle or an ellipse, a square or a lozenge, just as you choose to do; and in the inscribed space write with red ink (better still with carmine) the figure 1. Then index the passage under letter B. "Beard younger than hair of head. 1." If you wish to be very careful in your common-placing, you may double index the passage by turning to letter H, and indicating the passage as "Head, hair of, older than beard." And so you may continue to transcribe consecutively all the passages which strike you in the course of your reading: never omitting to number the passage and to index it as soon as numbered. That is the system adopted by the Distressed Compiler, and he has made constant use of it for nearly forty years.'—G. A. Sala.