riendship was worth having. But
financially, 'Physiological AEsthetics' was a dead failure; it wasn't the
sort of work to sell briskly at the bookstalls. Mr. Smith would have
none of it. The reviews, indeed, were, almost without exception,
favourable; the volume went off well for a treatise of its kind--that is
to say, we got rid of nearly 300 copies; but even so, it left a deficit
of some forty or fifty pounds to the bad against me. Finally, the
remaining stock fell a victim to the flames in Mr. Kegan Paul's
historical fire, when many another stout volume perished: and that was
the end of my _magnum opus_. Peace to its ashes! Mr. Paul gave me 15_l._
as compensation for loss sustained, and I believe I came out some 30_l._
a loser by this, my first serious literary venture. In all these
matters, however, I speak from memory alone, and it is possible I may be
slightly wrong in my figures.

But though 'Physiological AEsthetics' was a financial failure, it paid me
in the end, both scientifically and commercially. Not only did it bring
me into immediate contact with several among the leaders of thought in
London, but it also made my name known in a very modest way, and induced
editors--those arbiters of literary fate--to give a second glance at my
unfortunate manuscripts. Almost immediately after its appearance, Leslie
Stephen (I omit the Mr., _honoris causa_) accepted two papers of mine
for publication in the _Cornhill_. 'Carving a Cocoanut' was the first,
and it brought me in twelve guineas. That was the very first money I
earned in literature. I had been out of work for months, the abolition
of my post in Jamaica having thrown me on my beam-ends, and I was
overjoyed at so much wealth poured suddenly in upon me. Other magazine
articles followed in due course, and before long I was earning a
modest--a very modest--and precarious income, yet enough to support
myself and my family. Moreover, Sir William Hunter, who was then engaged
on his gigantic 'Gazetteer of India,' gave me steady employment in his
office at Edinburgh, and I wrote with my own hand the greater part of
the articles on the North-West Provinces, the Punjaub, and Sind, in
those twelve big volumes.

Meanwhile, I was hard at work in my leisure moments (for I have
sometimes some moments which I regard as leisure) on another ambitious
scientific work, which I called 'The Colour-Sense.' This book I
published on the half-profits system with Truebner. Compared with m