rly manhood when that good old harsh-faced
schoolmistress, Hard Times, took me by the hand. I wrote, and with
amazement I found that my writing was accepted. _Chambers's Journal_ it
was which rose to the occasion, and I have had a kindly feeling for its
mustard-coloured back ever since. Fifty little cylinders of manuscript
did I send out during eight years, which described irregular orbits
among publishers, and usually came back like paper boomerangs to the
place that they had started from. Yet in time they all lodged somewhere
or other. Mr. Hogg, of _London Society_, was one of the most constant of
my patrons, and Mr. James Payn wasted hours of his valuable time in
encouraging me to persevere. Knowing as I did that he was one of the
busiest men in London, I never received one of his shrewd and kindly and
most illegible letters without a feeling of gratitude and wonder.

I have heard folk talk as though there were some hidden back door by
which one may creep into literature, but I can say myself that I never
had an introduction to any editor or publisher before doing business
with them, and that I do not think that I suffered on that account. Yet
my apprenticeship was a long and trying one. During ten years of hard
work, I averaged less than fifty pounds a year from my pen. I won my way
into the best journals, _Cornhill_, _Temple Bar_, and so on; but what is
the use of that when the contributions to those journals must be
anonymous? It is a system which tells very hardly against young authors.
I saw with astonishment and pride that 'Habakuk Jephson's Statement' in
the _Cornhill_ was attributed by critic after critic to Stevenson, but,
overwhelmed as I was by the compliment, a word of the most lukewarm
praise sent straight to my own address would have been of greater use to
me. After ten years of such work I was as unknown as if I had never
dipped a pen into an ink-bottle. Sometimes, of course, the anonymous
system may screen you from blame as well as rob you of praise. How well
I can see a dear old friend running after me in the street, waving a
London evening paper in his hand! 'Have you seen what they say about
your _Cornhill_ story?' he shouted. 'No, no. What is it?' 'Here it is!
Here it is!' Eagerly he turned over the column, while I, trembling with
excitement, but determined to bear my honours meekly, peeped over his
shoulder. 'The _Cornhill_ this month,' said the critic, 'has a story in
it which would have made Tha