oment I asked for Mr. Wemyss Reid. The gentleman with the
little brown bag stood and looked sharply at me, but with friendly if
penetrating eyes. "I am Wemyss Reid--you wish to see me?" he said. "Will
you give me five minutes?" I asked. "I am just going to the train, but I
will spare you a minute," he replied. He turned back into another smudgy
little room, put his bag on the table, and said: "Well?" I told him
quickly, eagerly, what I wished to do, and I said to him at last: "I
apologise for seeking you personally, but I was most anxious that
my work should be read by your own eyes, because I think I should
be contented with your judgment, whether it was favourable or
unfavourable." Taking up his bag again, he replied, "Send your stories
along. If I think they are what I want I will publish them. I will read
them myself." He turned the handle of the door, and then came back to me
and again looked me in the eyes. "If I cannot use them--and there might
be a hundred reasons why I could not, and none of them derogatory to
your work--" he said, "do not be discouraged. There are many doors. Mine
is only one. Knock at the others. Good luck to you."

I never saw Wemyss Reid again, but he made a friend who never forgot
him, and who mourned his death. It was not that he accepted my stories;
it was that he said what he did say to a young man who did not yet
know what his literary fortune might be. Well, I sent him a short story
called, 'An Epic in Yellow'. Proofs came by return of post. This story
was followed by 'The High Court of Budgery-Gar', 'Old Roses', 'My Wife's
Lovers', 'Derelict', 'Dibbs, R.N.', 'A Little Masquerade', and 'The
Stranger's Hut'. Most, if not all, of these appeared before the Pierre
stories were written.

They did not strike the imagination of the public in the same way as the
Pierre series, but they made many friends. They were mostly Australian,
and represented the life which for nearly four years I knew and studied
with that affection which only the young, open-eyed enthusiast, who
makes his first journey in the world, can give. In the same year, for
'Macmillan's Magazine', I wrote 'Barbara Golding' and 'A Pagan of the
South', which was originally published as 'The Woman in the Morgue'. 'A
Friend of the Commune' was also published in the 'English Illustrated
Magazine', and 'The Blind Beggar and the Little Red Peg' found a place
in the 'National Observer' after W. E. Henley had ceased to be its
editor, a