nd so raise the whole tone
of the correspondence. Thus what could be more elegant than my rendering
of the firm's instructions to the captain of one of their vessels. It
ran in this way:--

"From England, Captain, you must steer a
Course directly to Madeira,
Land the casks of salted beef,
Then away to Teneriffe.
Pray be careful, cool, and wary
With the merchants of Canary.
When you leave them make the most
Of the trade winds to the coast.
Down it you shall sail as far
As the land of Calabar,
And from there you'll onward go
To Bonny and Fernando Po"----

and so on for four pages. The captain, instead of treasuring up this
little gem, called at the office next day, and demanded with quite
unnecessary warmth what the thing meant, and I was compelled to
translate it all back into prose. On this, as on other similar
occasions, my employer took me severely to task--for he was, you see, a
man entirely devoid of all pretensions to literary taste!

All this, however, is a mere preamble, and leads up to the fact that
after ten years or so of drudgery I inherited a legacy which, though
small, was sufficient to satisfy my simple wants. Finding myself
independent, I rented a quiet house removed from the uproar and bustle
of London, and there I settled down with the intention of producing some
great work which should single me out from the family of the Smiths, and
render my name immortal. To this end I laid in several quires of
foolscap, a box of quill pens, and a sixpenny bottle of ink, and having
given my housekeeper injunctions to deny me to all visitors, I proceeded
to look round for a suitable subject.

I was looking round for some weeks. At the end of that time I found that
I had by constant nibbling devoured a large number of the quills, and
had spread the ink out to such advantage, what with blots, spills, and
abortive commencements, that there appeared to be some everywhere
except in the bottle. As to the story itself, however, the facility of
my youth had deserted me completely, and my mind remained a complete
blank; nor could I, do what I would, excite my sterile imagination to
conjure up a single incident or character.

In this strait I determined to devote my leisure to running rapidly
through the works of the leading English novelists, from Daniel Defoe to
the present day, in the hope of stimulating my latent ideas and of
getting a good grasp of the general tendency of literature. For