their consternation
requested their gentleman-companion to move to another table. Out
of the entire thirteen, I was the only one that was saved. I was
asked at the time if I did not believe in the unlucky number
thirteen. I told them I did not. In this case the believers were
all lost and the unbeliever saved.

"Out of the first-cabin passengers saved, I was one of the thirteen
saved.

"At the North-Western Hotel, in Liverpool, there can be found
thirteen names in the book of passengers that left in the
_Atlantic_ on the 20th of March, 1873, for New York; amongst them
my own. Every one of those passengers except myself were lost.

"Now, if these memorandums about the number thirteen--by one that
does not believe in it--is of any interest to you, it will please
me very much.

"I am, yours very truly,
"N. BRANDT.
"9, KONGENS GADE."

It is absurd to say that I have been unlucky since presiding at that
dinner. On the contrary, I have been most lucky--I have never presided
at another!

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XIV.

THE CONFESSIONS OF AN EDITOR.

Editors--Publishers--An Offer--Why I Refused it--The _Pall Mall
Budget_--_Lika Joko_--The _New Budget_--The Truth about my
Enterprises--_Au Revoir_!

Only the fortunate--or should we not rather say the unfortunate?--man
who has made up his mind to produce a journal of his own can have the
very faintest conception of the work and worry, the pains and penalties,
the hopes and fears, the anxiety and exasperation, involved in the
process. I have gone through it all, and perhaps something more than all
by comparison with other people in the same peculiar predicament. For
weeks before the promised periodical sees the light the unfortunate
proprietor feels himself to be a very Atlas supporting Heaven knows how
many cosmic schemes.

The first editor of my acquaintance was a little boy in knickerbockers,
with a lavish profusion of auburn locks, an old-fashioned physiognomy, a
wiry if diminutive frame, and a quick, nervous temperament, whose
youthful eyes had beheld the suns of fourteen summers.

My last editor is one whose physique would be commonly qualified by the
adjective _podgy_, of a full face, but with head somewhat depleted of
its capillary adornments, for which depriv