“‘You won’t find a child’s paper in the United States that pays,’ he growled.  ’We don’t care for contributions.  Me and my partner writes most of the articles ourselves.’

“‘Will you give me my manuscripts?’ I said again, anxious to put an end to the interview, and disgusted with the fellow’s falsehood.

“‘Hallo!  Mortimer, do you know where them are?’

“‘Sorry I can’t oblige you,’ said a fat man, dirtier and greasier than the first, emerging from an inner den; ‘they’re gone to press.’

“‘If you tell me any more lies,’ cried I, becoming furious, ’I shall take measures that you will not at all relish.  If you will not give me my manuscripts, I shall take them’; and, suiting the action to the word, I snatched them from a shelf, where they lay conspicuous, and carried them off without further parley.

“This cured me for a while of all literary ambition.  But the unquiet spirit within me would not rest, and during the following summer I wrote a sentimental tale, full of aspirations, large adjectives, and soft epithets.  It was accepted by a well-known monthly, then supposed to be in the height of its prosperity.  This was a grain of comfort, and I looked forward confidently to a long future of remuneration and renown, when a letter of regret arrived from the fair editress, returning my story, and explaining, that, being unable to meet her engagements, the magazine had been sold to pay her debts.

“This was bad; but my story was my own, and I accordingly despatched it to ‘The Salmagundian,’ a periodical of the highest reputation.  There it was published, praised, and further contributions requested.  Several weeks passed away.  I indited a poem, entitled, ’Past and Future, or, Golden and Leaden Hours.’  This also appeared in print, and my thirst for fame was beginning to be satisfied, when a polite note reached me from ‘The Salmagundian’ office, begging for another tale, and offering to pay me in back numbers of the magazine.  I wrote no more.”

“Art beguiled you then, perhaps?”

“Alas, yes, the siren!  I had taken lessons from a very clever colorist, and was thoroughly imbued with his enthusiasm.  ‘I, too, am a painter,’ I took for my motto; and, hiring a small studio in ——­ Street, I bought a large canvas, on which I sketched out a picture which cost me much money, more time, and many anxious thoughts.

“It represented the interior of a church, at the dim end of which a marriage was being solemnized.  In the foreground, a group of ten people, in anomalous costumes, was gathered round a youth supposed to be a rejected and despairing lover, who had fallen on the ground in a swoon.  It was very affecting, I thought.—­it would be very effective.  Were she to see it, she would be stung with remorse,—­she would behold the probable effects of her present indifference,—­she would relent.