d one unfavourable criticism. 'The death of your hero will
never do,' he said. 'If you kill that man Ralph, you'll kill your book.
What's the good? Take no more than the public will give you to begin
with, and by-and-by they'll take what _you_ give _them_.' It was
practical advice, but it went sorely against my grain. The death of the
hero was the natural sequel to the story; the only end that gave
meaning, and intention, and logic to its _motif_. I had a strong
predisposition towards a tragic climax to a serious story. To close a
narrative of disastrous events with a happy ending it always seemed
necessary to turn every incident into accident. That was like laughing
at the reader. Comedy was comedy, but comedy and tragedy together was
farce. Then a solemn close was so much more impressive. A happy end
nearly always frayed off into rags and nothingness, but a sad one closed
and clasped a story as with a clasp. Besides, a tragic end might be a
glorious and satisfying one, and need by no means be squalid and
miserable. But all these arguments went down before my friend's
practical assurance: 'Kill that man, and you kill your book.'

With much diffidence I altered the catastrophe and made my hero happy.
Then, thinking my work complete, I asked Mr. Theodore Watts (a friend to
whose wise counsel I owed much in those days) to read some 'galley'
slips of it. He thought the rustic scenes good, but advised me to
moderate the dialect, and he propounded to me his well-known views on
the use of _patois_ in fiction. 'It gives a sense of reality,' he said,
'and often has the effect of wit, but it must not stand in the way.' The
advice was sound. A man may know over much of his subject to write on it
properly. I had studied Cumbrian to too much purpose, and did not
realise that some of my scenes were like sealed books to the general
reader. So once again I ran over my story, taking out some of the
'nobbuts' and the 'dustas' and the 'wiltas.'

My first novel was now written, but I had still to get it published. In
my early days in London, while trying to live in the outer court of a
calling wherein the struggle for existence is keenest and bitterest and
cruellest, I conceived one day the idea of offering myself as a reader
to the publishers. With this view I called on several of that ilk, who
have perhaps no recollection of my early application. I recall my
interview with one of them. He was sitting at a table when I was taken
into hi