had a most unaccountable difficulty in getting any responsible person to
share my views. It is true that private friends have sometimes, after
listening to my effusions, gone the length of remarking, "Really, Smith,
that's not half bad!" or, "You take my advice, old boy, and send that to
some magazine!" but I have never on these occasions had the moral
courage to inform my adviser that the article in question had been sent
to well-nigh every publisher in London, and had come back again with a
rapidity and precision which spoke well for the efficiency of our postal
arrangements.

Had my manuscripts been paper boomerangs they could not have returned
with greater accuracy to their unhappy despatcher. Oh, the vileness and
utter degradation of the moment when the stale little cylinder of
closely written pages, which seemed so fresh and full of promise a few
days ago, is handed in by a remorseless postman! And what moral
depravity shines through the editor's ridiculous plea of "want of
space!" But the subject is a painful one, and a digression from the
plain statement of facts which I originally contemplated.

From the age of seventeen to that of three-and-twenty I was a literary
volcano in a constant state of eruption. Poems and tales, articles and
reviews, nothing came amiss to my pen. From the great sea-serpent to
the nebular hypothesis, I was ready to write on anything or everything,
and I can safely say that I seldom handled a subject without throwing
new lights upon it. Poetry and romance, however, had always the greatest
attractions for me. How I have wept over the pathos of my heroines, and
laughed at the comicalities of my buffoons! Alas! I could find no one to
join me in my appreciation, and solitary admiration for one's self,
however genuine, becomes satiating after a time. My father remonstrated
with me too on the score of expense and loss of time, so that I was
finally compelled to relinquish my dreams of literary independence and
to become a clerk in a wholesale mercantile firm connected with the West
African trade.

Even when condemned to the prosaic duties which fell to my lot in the
office, I continued faithful to my first love. I have introduced pieces
of word-painting into the most commonplace business letters which have,
I am told, considerably astonished the recipients. My refined sarcasm
has made defaulting creditors writhe and wince. Occasionally, like the
great Silas Wegg, I would drop into poetry, a