after all, only a
string of adventures, but it is still, and I think deservedly, a
popular book. The question with its author, however, was how, when it
was finished, he was to get it published. I took it to my friend, Robert
Chambers, and asked for his opinion about it. He looked at the
manuscript, which was certainly not in such good handwriting as his own,
and observed slyly--

'Would you mind just reading a bit of it?'

[Illustration: 'WOULD YOU MIND JUST READING A BIT OF IT?']

I had never done such a thing before, nor have I since, and the proposal
was a little staggering, not to my _amour propre,_ but to my natural
modesty. Moreover, I mistrusted my ability to do justice to it,
remembering what the poet has said about reading one's own productions:

The chariot wheels jar in the gates through which we drive them forth.

However, I started with it, and notwithstanding that we were subjected
to 'jars' (one by the servant, who came to put coals on the fire, just
at a crisis, and made me at heart a murderer), the specimen was
pronounced satisfactory.

'I think it will suit nicely for the _Journal_,' said my friend, which I
think were the pleasantest words I ever heard from the mouth of man. I
might have taken them, indeed, as a good omen; for though I have since
written more novels than I can count, I have never failed to secure
serial publication for every one of them. 'This gentleman's novels are
suitable enough for serial publication,' once wrote a critic of them,
intending to be very particularly disagreeable, but it aroused no
emotion in my breast warmer than gratitude.

[Illustration: THE SERVANT CAME TO PUT COALS ON THE FIRE]

So 'The Family Scapegrace' came out in _Chambers's Journal_. I do not
remember whether it had any effect upon its circulation, but it was well
spoken of, and there was at least one person in the world who thought it
a masterpiece. The difficulty, which no one but a young and unknown
writer can estimate, was to get a publisher to share in this belief. For
many years afterwards I published my books anonymously (_i.e._, 'by the
author' of so and so), and many a humorous interview I had with various
denizens of Paternoster Row, to whom I (very strongly) recommended them,
by proxy. 'If I were speaking to the author,' they said, 'it would be
unpleasant to say this (that, and the other of a deprecatory character),
but with _you_ we can be quite frank.' And they were sometimes very