s, obviously she couldn't quite collect the meaning of
the remainder, she pronounced against the whole. She called it a
'catalogue of ship's furniture,' and the manuscript came back to me. I
never regret this. I do not believe that this sea book would have cut a
figure in my old esteemed friend's list. Publishers are well known by
the public for the sort of intellectual fare they deal in. If I desired
a charming story about flirtation, divorce, inconvenient husbands, the
state of the soul when it has flown out of the body, the passions of the
female heart whilst it still beats hot in the breast, I should turn to
my friend's list, well assured of handsome satisfaction. But I don't
think I could read a sea book published by him. I should suspect the
marine qualities of a Jack who had run foul of, and got smothered up in,
a whole wardrobe of female apparel, grinning with a scarcely sunburnt
face through the horse-collar of a crinoline, the deep sea roll of his
gait hampered and destroyed by the clinging folds of a flannel
petticoat.

[Illustration: THE BOATSWAIN OF THE 'GROSVENOR']

Be this as it may, I sent the manuscript of 'The Wreck of the
"Grosvenor"' to my old friend Edward Marston, of the firm of Sampson Low
& Co. The firm offered me fifty pounds for it; I took the money and
signed the agreement, in which I disposed of all rights. Do I murmur
over the recollection of this fifty pounds which, with another ten
pounds kindly sent to me by Mr. Marston as the whole of, or a part of, a
cheque received from Messrs. Harper & Brothers, was all I ever got for
this sea book? Certainly not. The transaction was absolutely fair, and
what leaning there was was in my favour. The book was an experiment; it
was published anonymously; it might have fallen dead. Happily for
publisher and author, the book made its way. I believe it was
immediately successful in America, and that its reception there somewhat
influenced inquiry here. American critics who try to vex me say that my
books never would have been read in this country but for what was said
of them in the States, and for the publicity provided for them there by
the twenty-cent editions. How far this is true I don't know; but
certainly the Yankees are handsomer and prompter in their recognition of
what pleases them than we are on our side. What they like they raise a
great cry over, and the note of so mighty a concourse, I don't doubt,
fetches an echo out of distances below the h