raphy is yet to seek, and will probably never
be written. A partial solution of a difficulty is offered in this
experimental booklet. It is offered without diffidence, because it is
offered in perfect modesty. I have tried to show how one particular
novelist was made; where he got some of his experiences, and in
what varying fashions the World and Fate have tried to teach him his
business. It has been my effort to do this in the least egotistical and
the most straightforward fashion. The narrative is quite informal and
wanders where it will; but in its serial publication it received marked
favour from an indulgent public, and I like to give it an equal chance
of permanence with the rest of my writings, which I trust will not
convey the notion that I covet a too-exaggerated longevity. Should
the public favour continue, the field of experience is wide; and I may
repeat Dick Swiveller's saying to Mr. Quilp--'There is plenty more in
the shop this comes from.'

THE MAKING OF A NOVELIST

I

Only a day or two ago I found myself arrested on my eastward way along
the Strand by the hand of a friend upon my shoulder. We chatted for a
minute or two, and I found that I was in front of Lipscombe's window.
A ball of cork, which has had a restless time of it for many years,
was dodging up and down the limits of a glass shade, tossed by a jet of
water. The sight of it carried me back twenty years in a flash. 'In
the year 1872 I came to London, as many young men had done before me,
without funds, without friends, and without employment, trusting, with
the happy-go-lucky disposition of youth, to the chapter of accidents.
For some time the accidents were all unfavourable, and there came a
morning when I owned nothing in the world but the clothes I stood in.
I found myself that morning very tired, very hungry, very down in the
mouth, staring at the cork ball on the jet of water under the glass
shade, and drearily likening it to my own mental condition, flung hither
and thither, drenched, rolled over, lifted and dropped by a caprice
beyond the power of resistance. It was at this mournful moment that I
found my first friend in London. The story of that event shall be told
hereafter. What I want to say now is that the sight of that permanent
show in Lipscombe's window made me younger for a minute by a score
of years, and opened my mind to such a rush of recollections that I
determined then and there to put my memories on paper.