r small, what more can a
writer do? He is but the would-be medium: will the spirit voices employ
him or reject him?

London, with its million characters, grave and gay; its ten thousand
romances, its mysteries, its pathos, and its humour, lay to my hand. It
stretched before me, asking only intelligent observation, more or less
truthful report. But that I could make a story out of the things I
really knew never occurred to me. My tales were of cottage maidens, of
bucolic yeomen. My scenes were laid in windmills, among mountains, or in
moated granges. I fancy this phase of folly is common to most youthful
fictionists.

A trail of gentle melancholy lay over them. Sentiment was more popular
then than it is now, and, as do all beginners, I scrupulously followed
fashion. Generally speaking, to be a heroine of mine was fatal. However
naturally her hair might curl--and curly hair, I believe, is the
hall-mark of vitality; whatever other indications of vigorous health she
might exhibit in the first chapter, such as "dancing eyes," "colour
that came and went," "ringing laughter," "fawn-like agility," she was
tolerably certain, poor girl, to end in an untimely grave. Snowdrops and
early primroses (my botany I worked up from a useful little volume, "Our
Garden Favourites, Illustrated") grew there as in a forcing house; and
if in the neighbourhood of the coast, the sea-breezes would choose
that particular churchyard, somewhat irreverently, for their favourite
playground. Years later a white-haired man would come there leading
little children by the hand, and to them he would tell the tale anew,
which must have been a dismal entertainment for them.

Now and then, by way of change, it would be the gentleman who would
fall a victim of the deadly atmosphere of my literature. It was of
no particular consequence, so he himself would conclude in his last
soliloquy; "it was better so." Snowdrops and primroses, for whatever
consolation they might have been to him, it was hopeless for him to
expect; his grave, marked by a rude cross, being as a rule situate in an
exceptionally unfrequented portion of the African veldt or amid burning
sands. For description of final scenery on these occasions a visit to
the British Museum reading-room would be necessary.

Dismal little fledgelings! And again and again would I drive them from
the nest; again and again they fluttered back to me, soiled, crumpled,
physically damaged. Yet one person had admired