dence column of the _Halfpenny Welcome Guest_, which is
among my buried treasures, there is an 'answer' instead of the poem
which I had fondly hoped to see inserted in its glorious pages. And
this is the answer: 'G. R. S.--Your poem is not quite up to our
standard, but it gives decided promise of better things. We should
advise you to persevere.'

I am quoting from memory, for after turning that box upside down, I
can't lay my hand on this particular _Welcome Guest_, though I know that
it is there. I don't know who the editor was who gave me that kindly pat
on the head, but whoever he was he earned my undying gratitude. At the
time I felt I should have liked him better had he printed my poem. I was
no more fortunate with my prose than I was with my poetry. I began to
tell stories at a very early age, but it was not until after I had
succeeded in getting a poem printed among the 'Answers to
Correspondents' that I took seriously to prose with a view of
publication. I was encouraged to try my hand at writing stories by the
remembrance of the success which had attended my efforts at romantic
narrative when I was a school-boy.

[Illustration: THE LIBRARY]

There were eight other boys in the dormitory I slept in at Hanwell (the
College, not the Asylum), and they used to make me tell them stories
every night until they fell asleep, and woe betide me if I cut my
narrative short while one of them remained awake. I wasn't much of a boy
with a bolster or a boot, but they were all champions, and many a time
when I had married the hero and heroine and wound up my story did I have
to start a fresh complication in a hurry to save myself from
chastisement. I remember on one occasion, when I was dreadfully sleepy,
and I had got into a fearful fog as to who committed the murder, I made
a wild plunge at a ghost to get me out of the difficulty, and the whole
dormitory rose to a boy and set about me with bolsters in their
indignation at such a lame and impotent conclusion.

Night after night did those maddening words, 'Tell us a story,' salute
my ears as I laid my weary little head upon the pillow, and I had to
tell one or run the gauntlet of eight bolsters and sixteen slippers, to
say nothing of the biggest boy of all, who kept a reserve pair of boots
hidden away under his bed for purposes not altogether unconnected with
midnight excursions to a neighbouring orchard.

[Illustration: 'SIR HUGO']

It was the remembrance of my early st