e water was rising in her
hold from a score of external fissures. Our anti-nationalists and Little
Englanders were little cabin-dwellers, shirkers from the open deck,
careless of the ship's hull, and masts, and sails, busily bent only
upon the enrichment of their particular divisions among her saloons.

In the early days of my engagement as assistant editor of _The Mass_, I
think I may claim that I worked hard and with honest intent to make the
paper represent truly what I conceived to be the good and helpful side
of Socialism, of social progress and reform. But, if I am to be frank, I
fear I must admit that within six months of my first engagement by
Clement Blaine, I had ceased to entertain any sincere hope or ambition
in this direction. And yet I remained assistant editor of _The Mass_.

The two statements doubtless redound to my discredit, and I have little
excuse to offer. The work represented bread and butter for me, and that
counted for something, of course. But I will admit that I think I could
have found some more worthy employment, and should have done so but for
Beatrice Blaine, my employer's daughter.

Time and time again my gorge rose at being obliged to play my part--very
often, as a writer, the principal part--in what I knew to be an
absolutely dishonest piece of journalism. Once I remember refusing to
write a grossly malicious and untrue representation of certain actions
of John Crondall's in the Transvaal. But I am ashamed to say I revised
the proofs of the lying thing, and saw it to press, when a hireling of
Clement Blaine's had prepared it. The man was a discharged servant of
Crondall's, a convicted thief, as I afterwards learned, as well as a
most abandoned liar. But his scurrilous fabrication, after publication
in _The Mass_, was quoted at length by the _Daily Gazette_, and by the
journals of that persuasion throughout the country.

I hardly know how to explain my relations with Blaine's daughter. I
suppose the main point is she was beautiful, in the sense that certain
cats are beautiful. I rarely heard of my Weybridge friends now, and
never, directly, of Sylvia. My life seemed infinitely remote from that
of the luxurious Wheeler _menage_. When I chanced to earn a few guineas
with my pen outside the littered office of _The Mass_ (where the bulk of
the editorial work fell to me), the money was almost invariably devoted
to the entertainment of Beatrice. She was in several ways not unlike a
kitten,