ANECDOTES OF AUTHORS.

A.T. Quiller-Couch told a good Cornish story the other day in presenting certificates to the members of an ambulance class in his own town of Troy.

"Years ago," he said, "an old Cornish fisherman at a similar class was asked how he would treat the apparently drowned.

"'Well,' he replied, 'the first thing we always did was to empty the man's pockets.'"—Westminster Gazette.

When Archibald Clavering Gunter began the series of novels which was to make him famous, he tried in vain to find a publisher. As none of them would have anything to do with his books, he was obliged to bring them out himself.

Shortly after the appearance of "Mr. Barnes of New York," he met the head of one of the big publishing houses, who inquired how his last book was selling.

"Fine," responded the cheerful commercialist; "I've sold two tons of it already."

Thackeray chanced to be dining at his club when a pompous officer of the Guards stopped beside the table and said:

"Haw, Thackeray, old boy, I hear Lawrence has been painting yer portrait!"

"So he has," was the reply.

"Full length?"

"No; full-length portraits are for soldiers, that we may see their spurs. But the other end of the man is the principal thing with authors," said Thackeray.—London Tit-Bits.

Mr. Gladstone was once guilty of deliberately evading an international regulation at the Franco-Italian frontier. He was carrying for his refreshment a basket of fine grapes, which stringent regulations at the time forbade being taken from one country to the other, on account of phylloxera, an insect that attacks the roots and leaves of the grapevines.

Mr. Gladstone's great brain reviewed the situation; he must obey the law, but he was determined to have the grapes, so he sat down then and there on the railway station bench and—ate them.

Irving Bacheller, the author of "Eben Holden," went a little farther north than usual last summer while on his vacation, and penetrated Newfoundland. He caught a good many fish, but this did not prevent his keeping an eye on the natives. He was particularly impressed by the men who spent the day lounging about the village stores.

"What do you fellows do when you sit around the store like this?" he asked of the crowd arranged in a circle of tilted chairs and empty boxes and maintaining a profound silence.

"Well," drawled one of the oldest, "sometimes we set and think, and then again other times we just set."—Woman's Home Companion.

Marie Corelli's domestic quiet at Stratford-on-Avon seemed likely to be destroyed not long since by the opening of a girls' school in the house immediately adjoining her own. The famous novelist found that the recitations of the pupils greatly interrupted her literary work. She stood it, however, as long as she could, but finally wrote a letter of protest to the proprietor of the school. The reply she received from the elderly school-mistress was prompt, and ran as follows:

"Dear Miss Corelli: Judging from the literary work of yours which it has been my privilege to see, I should say that it would be just as well if you were interrupted even more frequently."—New York Times.

Emerson Hough once wrote a story called "Hasenberg's Cross-Eyed Horse," which he sought diligently, but unsuccessfully, to market with the greater number of the known periodicals of the world. At last the story found a resting-place in Mr. Hough's desk. Three years ago, feeling a bit let down physically, he took the advice of a distinguished publisher of New York and put himself in the hands of an osteopathic physician.

Some doubts as to the beneficial results existed, but no doubt whatever as to the size of the bill. Mr. Hough pondered long and seriously on the question of getting even with his doctor. At length he happened to think of his old story of the cross-eyed horse.

"I'll have the osteopath treat the horse's cross-eyes," said the author to himself. Whereupon he rewrote the story, sold it promptly at a good figure, and made it a chapter of his last novel, "Heart's Desire," where it is known as "Science at Heart's Desire."—Bookman.