ten o'clock
After breakfast he went on with his serial . The words flowed from his pen , though he broke off from the writing frequently to look up definitions in the dictionary or to refer to the rhetoric . He often read or re-read a chapter at a time , during such pauses ; and he consoled himself that while he was not writing the great things he felt to be in him , he was learning composition , at any rate , and training himself to shape up and express his thoughts . He toiled on till dark , when he went out to the reading-room and explored magazines and weeklies until the place closed at ten o'clock . This was his programme for a week . Each day he did three thousand words , and each evening he puzzled his way through the magazines , taking note of the stories , articles , and poems that editors saw fit to publish . One thing was certain : What these multitudinous writers did he could do , and only give him time and he would do what they could not do .