R.
_Fun_ 'An Unfortunate Attachment' R.
_Fun_ 'A Song of May' R.
_Banter_ 'Nearer and Dearer' R.
_Judy_ 'An Unfortunate Attachment' R.
_London Society_ 'The Minstrel's Curse' R.
_Owl_ 'Nearer and Dearer' R.

Returned! Returned! Returned! All I got for my pains was the chance of
making a joke in my diary on my birthday. In those days of my wild
struggles with Fate I find written against the 2nd of September, 'Many
unhappy Returns.'

I believe that I should have flung up authorship in despair, and never
have had a first book, but for the chance remark of the dear old doctor
who looked after my health in the days when I hadn't to pay my own
doctor's bills.

[Illustration: THE DRAWING-ROOM]

He was talking about me one day in my father's private office, and I
happened to be passing, and I heard him say, 'He's a nice lad--what a
pity he scribbles!' Scribbles! the word burnt itself into my brain, it
seared my heart, it brought the hot blood to my cheeks, and the
indignant tears to my eyes. Was I not ready to write an acrostic at a
moment's notice on the name of the sweetheart of any fellow who asked me
to do it? Had I not written a poem on the fall of Napoleon, which my
eldest sister had read aloud to her schoolfellows, and made them all mad
with jealousy to think there wasn't a brother among the lot of them who
could even rhyme decently? Had I not had stories rejected by the _Family
Herald_, _All the Year Round_, and _Chambers's Journal_, and a letter on
the subject of the crossing opposite St. Mark's Church, Hamilton
Terrace, printed in the _Marylebone Mercury_? And was I to be dubbed a
scribbler, and pitied for my weakness? It is nearly twenty years since
those words were uttered, and my dear old doctor rests beyond the reach
of all human ills, but I can hear them now. They have never ceased to
ring in my ears as they rang that day.

[Illustration: 'FAUST UP TO DATE']

My pride was wounded, my vanity was hurt, I was put upon my mettle. I
registered a silent vow there and then that some day I would have a
noble revenge on my friendly detractor, and make him confess that he was
wrong when he said that it was a pity I scribbled.

From that hour I set myself steadily to be an author. I wrote poetry by
the mile, prose by the acre, and I sent it to every kind of periodical
that I