an offense to live and a virtue to die. And young William
Makepeace wrote home to his mother that Schiller was the greatest man
that ever lived and that he was going to translate his books and give
them to England.

No doubt there are certain people born with a tendency to infectiousness
in regard to certain diseases; so there are those who catch the literary
mania on slight exposure.

"I've got it," said Thackeray, and so he had.

He went back to England and made groggy efforts at Blackstone, and
Somebody's Digest, and What's-His-Name's Compendium, but all the time he
scribbled and sketched.

The young man had come into possession of a goodly fortune from his
father's estate--enough to yield him an income of over two thousand
dollars a year. But bad investments and signing security for friends took
the money the way that money usually goes when held by a man who has not
earned it.

"Talk about riches having wings," said Thackeray; "my fortune had pinions
like a condor, and flew like a carrier-pigeon."

When Thackeray was thirty he was eking out a meager income writing poems,
reviews, criticisms and editorials. His wife was a confirmed invalid, a
victim of mental darkness, and his sorrows and anxieties were many.

He was known as a bright writer, yet London is full of clever,
unsuccessful men. But in Thackeray's thirty-eighth year "Vanity Fair"
came out, and it was a success from the first.

In "Yesterdays With Authors," Mr. Fields says: "I once made a pilgrimage
with Thackeray to the various houses where his books had been written;
and I remember when we came to Young Street, Kensington, he said, with
mock gravity, 'Down on your knees, you rogue, for here "Vanity Fair" was
penned; and I will go down with you, for I have a high opinion of that
little production myself.'"

Young Street is only a block from the Kensington Metropolitan
Railway-Station. It is a little street running off Kensington Road. At
Number Sixteen (formerly Number Thirteen), I saw a card in the window,
"Rooms to Rent to Single Gentlemen."

I rang the bell, and was shown a room that the landlady offered me for
twelve shillings a week if I paid in advance; or if I would take another
room one flight up with a "gent who was studying hart" it would be only
eight and six. I suggested that we go up and see the "gent." We did so,
and I found the young man very courteous and polite.

He told me that he had never heard Thackeray's name in connect