nonymously, and
my poor father used to ascribe the acclamation with which it was
received, to the fact that no one knew who it might not have been written
by. _Omne ignotum pro magnifico_, and during its month of anonymity the
book was a frequent topic of appreciative comment in good literary
circles. Almost coincidently with the discovery that he was a mere
nobody, people began to feel that their admiration had been too hastily
bestowed, and before long opinion turned all the more seriously against
him for this very reason. The subscription, to which the Lord Mayor had
at first given his cordial support, was curtly announced as closed before
it had been opened a week; it had met with so little success that I will
not specify the amount eventually handed over, not without protest, to my
father; small, however, as it was, he narrowly escaped being prosecuted
for trying to obtain money under false pretences.

The Geographical Society, which had for a few days received him with open
arms, was among the first to turn upon him--not, so far as I can
ascertain, on account of the mystery in which he had enshrouded the exact
whereabouts of Erewhon, nor yet by reason of its being persistently
alleged that he was subject to frequent attacks of alcoholic
poisoning--but through his own want of tact, and a highly-strung nervous
state, which led him to attach too much importance to his own
discoveries, and not enough to those of other people. This, at least,
was my father's version of the matter, as I heard it from his own lips in
the later years of his life.

"I was still very young," he said to me, "and my mind was more or less
unhinged by the strangeness and peril of my adventures." Be this as it
may, I fear there is no doubt that he was injudicious; and an ounce of
judgement is worth a pound of discovery.

Hence, in a surprisingly short time, he found himself dropped even by
those who had taken him up most warmly, and had done most to find him
that employment as a writer of religious tracts on which his livelihood
was then dependent. The discredit, however, into which my father fell,
had the effect of deterring any considerable number of people from trying
to rediscover Erewhon, and thus caused it to remain as unknown to
geographers in general as though it had never been found. A few
shepherds and cadets at up-country stations had, indeed, tried to follow
in my father's footsteps, during the time when his book was still b