fortunate change in the _personnel_ of the firm to
which I was bound, I avoided disaster. The fatal agreement was
cancelled, and in consideration of my release I undertook to write two
books upon a moderate royalty. Thus, then, did I escape out of bondage.
To be just, it was my own fault that I should ever have been sold into
it, but authors are proverbially guileless when they are anxious to
publish their books, and a piece of printed paper with a few additions
written in a neat hand looks innocent enough. Now no such misfortunes
need happen, for the Authors' Society is ready and anxious to protect
them from themselves and others, but in those days it did not exist.

[Illustration: THE FARM.]

This is the history of how I drifted into the writing of books. If it
saves one beginner so inexperienced and unfriended as I was in those
days from putting his hand to a "hanging" agreement under any
circumstances whatsoever, it will not have been set out in vain.

The advice that I give to would-be authors, if I may presume to offer
it, is to think for a long while before they enter at all upon a career
so hard and hazardous, but having entered on it, not to be easily cast
down. There are great virtues in perseverance, even though critics sneer
and publishers prove unkind.

TOLD BY THE COLONEL.

XII.

THE CAT'S REVENGE.

BY W. L. ALDEN.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY R. JACK.

-----

We had been discussing the Darwinian hypothesis, and the Colonel had
maintained a profound silence, which was sufficient evidence that he did
not believe in the development of man from the lower animals. Some one,
however, asked him plumply his opinion of Darwinianism, and he
sententiously replied, "Darned nonsense."

[Illustration: "DARNED NONSENSE."]

Feeling that this view of the matter possibly merited expansion, the
Colonel caused his chair to assume its customary oratorical attitude on
its two rear legs, and began to discourse.

"There are some things," he remarked, "which do look as if there might
be a grain of truth in this monkey theory. For instance, when I was in
France I was pretty nearly convinced that the monkey is the connecting
link between man and the Frenchmen, but after all there is no proof of
it. That's what's the matter with Darwinianism. When you produce a man
who can remember that his grandfather was a monkey, or when you show me
a monkey that can produce papers to prove that he is my second cousin,
I