h to make known my experience, I now put these memoirs before the
public.

It will, of course, be urged against me that I have not been
successful in what I have already attempted, and that our house
has failed. This is true. I have not been successful. Our house
has failed. But with whom has the fault been? Certainly not in my
department.

The fact is, and in this my preface I will not keep the truth
back from a discerning public, that no firm on earth,--or indeed
elsewhere,--could be successful in which our Mr. Jones is one of the
partners. There is an overweening vanity about that man which is
quite upsetting. I confess I have been unable to stand it. Vanity is
always allied to folly, and the relationship is very close in the
person of our Mr. Jones. Of Mr. Brown I will never bring myself to
say one disrespectful word. He is not now what he was once. From the
bottom of my heart I pity his misfortunes. Think what it must be
to be papa to a Goneril and a Regan,--without the Cordelia. I have
always looked on Mrs. Jones as a regular Goneril; and as for the
Regan, why it seems to me that Miss Brown is likely to be Miss Regan
to the end of the chapter.

No; of Mr. Brown I will say nothing disrespectful; but he never was
the man to be first partner in an advertising firm. That was our
mistake. He had old-fashioned views about capital which were very
burdensome. My mistake was this,--that in joining myself with Mr.
Brown, I compromised my principles, and held out, as it were, a left
hand to capital. He had not much, as will be seen; but he thought a
deal of what he had got, and talked a deal of it too. This impeded my
wings. This prevented me from soaring. One cannot touch pitch and not
be defiled. I have been untrue to myself in having had any dealings
on the basis of capital; and hence has it arisen that hitherto I have
failed.

I make these confessions hoping that they may be serviceable to trade
in general. A man cannot learn a great secret, and the full use of a
great secret, all at once. My eyes are now open. I shall not again
make so fatal a mistake. I am still young. I have now learned my
lesson more thoroughly, and I yet anticipate success with some
confidence.

Had Mr. Brown at once taken my advice, had his few thousand pounds
been liberally expended in commencing a true system of advertising,
we should have been,--I can hardly surmise where we should have been.
He was for sticking altogether to the old sys