was to
straddle on the counter and play with a black cat. There was an Irishman
behind this counter who, for three pounds a week, edited the magazine, read
the MS., looked after the printer and binder, kept the accounts when he had
a spare moment, and entertained the visitors. I did not trouble Messrs.
Macmillan and Messrs. Longman with polite requests to look at my MS., but
straddled on the counter, played with the cat, joked with the Irishman, was
treated by Mr. B., and in the natural order of things my stories went into
the magazine, and were paid for. Strange were the ways of this office;
Shakespeare might have sent in prose and poetry, but he would have gone
into the wastepaper basket had he not previously straddled. For those who
were in the swim this was a matter of congratulation; straddling, we would
cry, "We want no blooming outsiders coming along interfering with our
magazine. And you, Smith, you devil, you had a twenty-page story in last
month and cut me out. O'Flanagan, do you mind if I send you in a couple of
poems as well as my regular stuff, that will make it all square?" "I'll try
to manage it; here's the governor." And looking exactly like the
unfortunate Mr. Sedley, Mr. B. used to slouch along, and he would fall into
his leather armchair, the one in which he wrote the cheques. The last time
I saw that chair it was standing in the street, alas! in the hands of the
brokers.

But conservative though we were in matters concerning "copy," though all
means were taken to protect ourselves against interlopers, one who had not
passed the preliminary stage of straddling would occasionally slip through
our defences. I remember one especially. It was a hot summer's day, we were
all on the counter, our legs swinging, when an enormous young man entered.
He must have been six feet three in height. He was shown into Mr. B.'s
room, he asked him to read a MS., and he fled, looking very frightened.
"Wastepaper basket, wastepaper basket," we shouted when Mr. B. handed us
the roll of paper. "What an odd-looking fish he is!" said O'Flanagan; "I
wonder what his MS. is like." We remonstrated in vain, O'Flanagan took the
MS. home to read, and returned next morning convinced that he had
discovered an embryo Dickens. The young man was asked to call, his book was
accepted, and we adjourned to the bar.

A few weeks afterwards this young man took rooms in the house next to me on
the ground floor. He was terribly inflated with his