, in their wisdom, destined me for a commercial career.
If I had followed the bent given me when I left school, I should
now have been a very indifferent clerk in the hide and valonia
business. But like you, my dear young friends, I felt that my true
vocation was journalism, and I determined to be a journalist.

I will tell you exactly how I did it. Like you, I meant to be an
editor some day, but also, I trust, like you, I felt that it would
be convenient, if not necessary to start by being a reporter. So I
began to study shorthand, teaching myself by Pitman's system. When,
after infinite pains, I had mastered this mystery, I began to look
out for an opening on the Press. I had no friends in journalism, not
the remotest acquaintance. I made the tour of the newspaper offices
in the town where I lived, was more or less courteously received,
and uniformly assured that there was no opening. One exception was
made by a dear friend whose name is to-day known and honoured
throughout Great Britain, who was then the young assistant-editor of
a local daily paper. He gave me some trial work to do, and was so
far satisfied that he promised me the first vacancy on the junior
staff of reporters.

That was excellent, but I did not sit down waiting till fortune
dropped the promised plum into my mouth. I got at all the newspapers
within reach, searched for advertisements for reporters, answered
them day after day, week after week, even month after month,
without response. At last a cautious inquiry came. The reply was
deemed satisfactory, and I got my chance.

This, dear young friends, is the short and simple annal of my start
in journalism, and you will see that the pathway is equally open to
you.

CHAPTER VII.

A CINQUE PORT.

Skulls piled roof high in the vault beneath the church tower supply
the only show thing Hythe possesses. There is some doubt as to their
precise nationality, but of their existence there can be none, as any
visitor to the town may see for himself on payment of sixpence
(parties of three or more eighteenpence). It is known how within a
time to which memory distinctly goes the skulls were found down upon
the beach, whole piles of them, thick as shingle on this coast. The
explanation of their tenancy of British ground is popularly referred
to the time, now nearly nine hundred years gone by, when Earl Godwin,
being exiled, made a raid on this conveniently accessible part of
England, and after a hard fig