plete, and his brows
were familiar with the touch of laurel, he sent the great work to a
London manager, and never heard word of it afterwards, good, bad, or
indifferent He waited for months in sick hope and sick despair, and then
wrote asking for a judgment. He waited more months, and no answer came.
He wrote for the return of his work, humbly, then impatiently, and
finally with wrathful insult No answer ever came. The muse seemed
as vile a jade as Claudia. But he had his tattered and stained old
manuscript, interlined and entangled so that no creature but, himself
could read it, and he put it all in type once more, and sent his printed
copy to an eminent firm of publishers, who, after considering the matter
for six months, offered to take the risk of publication for a hundred
pounds, on which he burned his manuscript in the cracked office stove,
and left the printed copy of it in the publishers' hands to do as they
pleased with it.

He turned to prose and wrote short stories, and sent them broadcast They
came back, and he sent them out again. He made a list of magazines and a
list of the stories, and each one went the rounds. One stuck and brought
proof-sheets, and in due time a ten-pound note. He poured in all the
rest on the one discerning editor, who had already refused one half of
them. In a month the man of discernment offered ten shillings per page
for the lot. Paul accepted, and in another month was back in London,
resolute to try a new backfall with the world.

He found lodgings far away in the northern district, apprised the one
discerning editor of his whereabouts, and sat down to wait and work for
glory. And, oh! how kind again on a sudden seemed the Fates who for four
years had been so harsh with him. Scarce had he been settled a week when
there came a letter addressed to Paul Armstrong, Esq., care of Messrs.
Blank and Blank, reporting that the editor of a certain magazine had
read with much pleasure a tale from Mr. Armstrong's pen, and would be
happy to receive from him one of the same length. Paul danced and sang,
and then plunged into labour, wrote his story, received his proof-sheet
and his cheque, and with the letter a request that he would submit
anything he might have in the way of a three-volume story. He was
assured that it would receive instant attention.

'I'm five-and-twenty,' said Paul, 'and the world is at my feet'

But books are not to be written in a day, though they may be
commissioned