humour, with keenest, never-ending delight in Dick Swiveller and the Marchioness. If I could, without inconvenience to anybody else, have shot him dead on the spot, I believe I should have done so. In view of all the circumstances, I made believe that it was, as our mutual friend Mr. Toots used to say, ' of no consequence, straightway moved over bag and baggage to the other side of the desk, and for the remainder of my office experience sat there, helping Blossom to make invoices and jokes. I never said a word to Mr. Smith of protest or reproach. Looking back upon the event now, I recognise in it a course of conduct one would not look for in a deacon. It was unrelieved even by the tendering of a five- or a ten-pound note in acknowledgment of at least fifty pounds I had saved him in wages. I now see in it the happiest deliverance that ever befel me. It was not only that I, being almost in the toils, was delivered from the destiny of the commercial clerk, but Jacob, my supplanter, was the very man whose help, often given unconsciously, was of priceless value to me at this juncture. He was an omnivorous reader and a man of pronounced literary taste.

It was no new thing for me to turn my attention towards literature. As soon as I could read I wanted to write, and did so pretty freely. My first serious work, written in my twelfth year, was an essay on King David. Lacking breadth of mind and mature judgment, I was much struck by one side of his character, and that not the most reputable. When after the first month or two in Redcross Street I got on friendly terms with Raleigh, terms that never varied during our long acquaintance, I brought this precious MS. down to the office and inflicted several pages upon him. It was written in a scathing style: the sort of thing that makes one, reflecting in maturer years, glad that King David had passed away so that there was no possibility of his seeing or hearing what I thought of the whole story of his dealings with Uriah the Hittite. Raleigh was, or professed to be, deeply shocked at the free handling of the subject.

My next work was a novel. This was chiefly written in my fourteenth year, and, judging from a fragment I came across many years after, was a particularly base imitation of the worser style of Charles Dickens. I set myself to produce a certain amount of copy every day, or rather every night, for the work was done on my return home from the office. I generally managed in the afternoon, in prolongation of invented inquiry after some invoice or VOL. XXV.-NO. 145, N.S.

3

account, to get down to what was then called 'the big' Landing Stage. Walking up and down by the tide of the bustling river, I thought out incidents and characters in this masterpiece of fiction covering sufficient ground for the night's writing.

About this time I became possessor of a book that had a marked and permanent influence. I think I owe more to it than to any I ever read. It was Smiles''Self-Help,' and was given to me by Mr. Henry Draper, a tanner from Kenilworth. He was one of Mr. Smith's customers, and sometimes coming in to the office when I was in sole charge used to chat with me on other subjects than hides and valonia. I have the book yet with its inscription written in faded ink. Thirty years later, on board the Teutonic, steaming to Portsmouth to take part in the Naval Review in honour of the visit of the German Emperor, I found a fellow-guest in Mr. Smiles. I told him how I had come to read his book, and was glad of the opportunity of expressing the lifelong obligation under which it laid me. I learned from it a lesson verified by subsequent experience, that there is no royal road to any goal worth reaching; that the only effective help is self-help.

Having in the circumstances already related finally convinced myself that there was no room for me in Mr. Smith's office, I returned with more deeply rooted purpose to my old dream of literature. As far as I could see my way, I came to the conclusion that fiction offered the most successful avenue to an established position and ultimate fame. That I should get on somehow I never had the slightest doubt, a confidence not uncommon with boys who think it would be a nice thing to write books. I did not hesitate to say as much to Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton. I had been reading 'The Caxtons,' 'My Novel,' and a series of what I am afraid are now forgotten essays, ' Caxtoniana.' I read everything I could get hold of, but hankered after authoritative direction for a course of study. I wrote to Bulwer Lytton asking him to advise me, apologising for addressing him without being personally acquainted, mentioning in offhand fashion the certainty that some day we should meet on the ladder of fame.' I remember the phrase, because shortly after I had posted the letter it occurred to me that it was maladroitly expressed. Of course, if we were to meet on a ladder, as I would be going up, the author of 'My Novel' would be coming down. I do not know whether the same idea struck and affronted Sir Edward Lytton. Certainly he did not answer my letter.

Laying aside the unfinished novel, which I don't think had any plot to speak of, I took to writing short stories, all unknowing that I was attempting what to do well is an exceedingly rare accomplishment. I finished two or three and sent them the dreary round of the magazines, with stamps enclosed and a polite request for the return of the MS. if unsuited, a boon in no single instance refused. The first time I saw myself in print was as a poet. The Liverpool Mercury' in those days had a Poets' Corner, to which for a year or eighteen months I became an occasional contributor. It was poor stuff, but mine own, and I was much elated to see myself in print with my name fully signed.

6.66

Some time before we left Redcross Street, Raleigh had by strategic movements succeeded in getting a daily newspaper taken for office use. He began by paying for it out of his own purse. Then one week, making up the petty cash, he casually slipped in the item, Mercury," 6d. As nothing was said, he boldly went on, and the daily newspaper became an institution. For a long while Mr. Smith loftily ignored it. Raleigh found an opportunity of explaining that it was necessary by reason of the advertisements of sales. It was therefore suffered, but, regarded as light literature, it was anathema. I do not fancy Mr. Smith read much, and nothing of modern literature, unless the Evangelical Magazine,' taken monthly, came under that denomination. His ignorance of what was going on in the world at the time must have been amazing. Since, however, the newspaper was there, and he was paying for it, he by slow degrees became a reader. He would not take it up in the morning and devour its contents as we did. Sometimes in the afternoon, his soul comforted by a mutton chop brought in from a neighbouring eating-house, he would call out, Henery, let me glance my eye over the " Merk'ry."

That was his way of putting it, and it was not without signification. Abandoned people like myself, or even George Gordon Raleigh, might, setting aside ledgers and invoices, sit over a frivolous newspaper and read it through. For him, with some consciousness that he was dallying with sin, he might in office hours glance his eye over the paper'-only one eye, observe. I am afraid that his habit of calling me Henery and, by way of compensation, cutting out a syllable from 'Mercury' may convey the impression that he was an illiterate man, which was certainly not the case. It was a fashion of pronunciation, perhaps local, but strongly marked.

One afternoon in King Street, nearing the time of my deliverance, I heard the sharp, peremptory voice calling out for the " Merk'ry.' It that day had published one of my poetical effusions-a bolder flight than usual, something, I think, in blank verse. I had spent a meagre annual holiday at Buxton, nursing a mighty muse amidst its mist-crowned hills. About this time I discovered Poe and read him with avidity. My verse was a spasmodic echo of the story of one of the beautiful and mysterious females who occasionally visited in ethereal form the sympathetic poet. It purported to relate how one of these anonymous maidens had looked me up in the loneliness of the Derbyshire hills and in musical language had bidden me be of good cheer, as eventually all would be well. I carried the 'Mercury' into Mr. Smith's office with a sickening apprehension that this female would get me into trouble. In about ten minutes I heard the cry, 'Henery!' I went into his room. There he sat, with spectacles on his forehead and the Mercury' in his hand, folded at the place where my verse stood prominent among the news and notes of the day.

'Is this yours?' he said, his small bright eyes fixed upon me with piercing gaze.

It was no use denying, so I boldly avowed it. Refixing his spectacles on his nose, he slowly read out the hapless verse line by line. When he came to anything approaching a trope he inquired

what that meant,' and when I explained he asked me why I hadn't said so.' As for my mysterious maiden, he, so to speak, tore her frail form to shreds.

This lack of sympathy with my literary aspirations was strictly confined to Mr. Smith's room. The outer office was unfeignedly proud of my distinction, and the morning when a flash of my verse illuminated the 'Mercury' was always a cheerful time. Blossom called me 'The Poet,' a name which stuck till I left the office, and was used as constantly and as naturally as if it were my surname. Once Blossom alluding to the Poet'in a business conversation with one of the tanners, a stalwart giant over six feet high, he looked surprised, and said, 'Poet, what poet?'

'That one,' said Blossom, pointing to me with his pen.

'Well,' said the giant, looking down on my few inches, 'he's certainly not Longfellow.'

Good that for a tanner.

One day I fancy in the spring of 1863-Blossom suggested

that he and I should learn shorthand, so, as he put it, we might write notes to each other across the desk at which we sat. Without definite idea whither the step might lead, I agreed. We bought Pitman's elementary books and set to work. We went on with great energy till we had mastered the alphabet and could form words of one syllable almost as fast and nearly as legibly as if they were written in longhand. This point reached, Blossom fell away. I, beginning to see that if I could not vault into literature over a three-volume novel, I might creep into journalism from the reporter's note-book, resolved to go on. It was peculiarly hard work, since, though reading came to me by nature, writing was always laborious, the work ill done. The boy or man who cannot write longhand freely and legibly may never become an adept at shorthand. I never was.

In the spring of 1864, having mastered the science of phonography and convinced myself that with practice I should speedily be able to take a verbatim report of a speech, I resolutely set myself to obtain an engagement as a reporter. I went the round of the Liverpool offices, going first, I think, to the Mercury,' where my halting verse had given me some kind of introduction. The editor was courteous, even kindly, but had nothing for me. Last of all, not in despair, because I meant to go on till I succeeded, I called on Edward Russell, then assistant editor of the 'Liverpool Post' in collaboration with its gifted but truculent proprietor, Mr. Whitty. At the outset this interview promised to end as the others had done. After some talk Russell began to display interest in the matter, asked me to attend a public meeting, write a summarised report and submit it to him. This I did, and he was so far satisfied as to tell me that to the first vacancy on the reporting staff I should have a good chance of being appointed. This was great encouragement. But there was a necessary indefiniteness about the arrangement, and whilst it was or was not maturing I looked out in every direction for a chance opening.

In later years I have been the regular recipient of applications from all kinds of people, young and old, who thought that by writing a letter or speaking a word I could forthwith secure their engagement on some first-class journal. It may serve a practical purpose to be precise in detailing the steps by which I finally obtained a footing on the Press. I pegged away making applications whenever I saw an advertisement. If I could not get