ne in upon me that it must be a
three-decker novel, not a novelette. I telegraphed to Harper & Brothers
to ask them whether it would suit them just as well if I made it into a
long novel. They telegraphed their assent at once; so I went on. At that
time Mr. F. N. Doubleday was a sort of director of Harper's firm. To
him I had told the tale in a railway train, and he had carried me off
at once to Henry M. Alden, to whom I also told it, with the result that
Harper's Magazine was wide open to it, and there in Quebec, soon after
my interview with Mr. Alden and Mr. Doubleday, the book was begun.

The first of the letters published in The House of Harper, however, was
apparently written immediately after my return to London when the novel
was well on its way. Evidently the first paragraph of the letter was an
apology for having suddenly announced the development of the book from a
long short story to a long novel; for I used these words:

"Yet if you really take an interest in the working of the human mind in
its relation to the vicissitudes of life, you will appreciate what I am
going to tell you, and will recognise that there is only stability in
evolution which the vulgar call chance.... Now, sir, perpend. Charley
Steele is going to be a novel of one hundred thousand words or one
hundred and twenty thousand--a real bang-up heartful of a novel."

Then there follows the confidence of a friend to a friend. As I look at
the words I am not sorry that I wrote them. They were a part of me. They
were the inveterate truth, but I would not willingly have uncovered my
inner self to any except the man to whom the words were written. But
here is what I wrote:

"I am a bit of a fool over this book. It catches me at every tender
corner of my nature. It has aroused all the old ardent dreams of youth
and springtime puissance. I cannot lay it down, and I cannot shorten it,
for story, character, soul and reflection, imagination, observation
are dragging me along after them.... This novel will make me or break
me--prove me human and an artist, or an affected literary bore. If
you want it you must take the risk. But, my dear Alden, you will be
investing in a man's heart--which may be a fortune or a folly. Why,
I ought to have seen--and far back in my brain I did see--that the
character of Charley Steele was a type, an idiosyncrasy of modern life,
a resultant of forces all round us, and that he would demand space in
which to live and tell hi