nformation to join me in the venture.
Then I took a set of offices, which were really much too extravagant and
in too good a position. The offices were in the best part of Collins
Street. But I was a very sanguine young man in those days. It was my
first venture in business bar the roller-skating. As a matter of fact,
not one of us three had any knowledge or experience in business. We
arranged that it should be my work to collect advertisements, attend to
the editing and printing, do the financing, and see to the sale of the
_Turf Tissue_, the name selected for the publication. My two partners'
business was to visit the training tracks, watch the horses at work, get
all the information they could out of trainers, jockeys and stable-boys,
and advise the public what horses to back.

Looking at it without prejudice, it seemed quite a good proposition on
paper. So on we went. The _Turf Tissue_ was to be sold to the public at
twopence a copy, a half-penny of which was to go to the seller. It was a
good commission, but by giving it we hoped to attract a very large number
of the newsboys who sold the evening paper, in view of the fact that by
publishing the _Tissue_ at 10 A.M. the sale would be all finished some
time before the evening papers came out.

Difficulties began early. I found that it was by no means so easy to
collect advertisements, knowing, of course, nothing about it, and I
tackled the job badly. Those who took up advertising space stipulated for
an actual distribution of ten thousand copies of the _Tissue_ each day,
which had to be guaranteed and be carried out before they paid for the
advertisements. I could see no other way out of the difficulty than to
consent to their terms. Next came how to print the _Tissue_. We had no
printing plant of our own, so we had to find what I think they called "a
job printer" to pull us through. This was by no means easy, as I was
unable to find one who would promise that the paper would actually be
printed each day and be ready for issue at the stipulated time. Besides,
the price to be charged seemed to me to be nearly ruinous. Yet if our
venture was worth trying it was worth paying for at first. The _Turf
Tissue_ was to become a genuine daily newspaper. There would be more than
ample profits by and by.

The time was near when the first issue was to take place, namely, the
Thursday of the week before the day on which the Melbourne Cup was to be
run, the first Tuesday in Novem