+-------------------------------------------------+ |Transcriber's note: | | | |Obvious typographic errors have been corrected. | | | +-------------------------------------------------+ CONFESSIONS OF A TRADESMAN WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR WITH CHRIST AT SEA. Crown 8vo, Cloth, 6s. A WHALEMAN'S WIFE. Crown 8vo, Cloth, 6s. THE APOSTLES OF THE SOUTH-EAST. Crown 8vo, Cloth, 6s. SEA SPRAY. Crown 8vo, Cloth, 6s. ADVANCE AUSTRALASIA. Crown 8vo, Cloth, 6s. LONDON: HODDER & STOUGHTON CONFESSIONS OF A TRADESMAN BY FRANK T. BULLEN AUTHOR OF "WITH CHRIST AT SEA," "THE CRUISE OF THE CACHALOT" ETC. HODDER AND STOUGHTON LONDON MCMVIII _Printed in 1908_ To THE SMALL TRADESMEN OF LONDON PREFACE It is a particular, and not altogether pleasant, feature of literary work in Britain that should an author make a certain amount of success with a book on one particular topic, it is thenceforward tacitly assumed that he must stick to that topic, assaying no other on pain of being mercilessly taken to task by the critics. Or what is worse, damned with faint praise. With this knowledge very vividly impressed upon me, I have hitherto refrained from writing upon a subject with which I have most intimate and painful acquaintance, and one that should appeal to a far wider circle of readers than any of my previous books have done. It is the subject of the small, struggling tradesman or shop-keeper. I may, I trust, be permitted to remind my good friends, the public, to whom I owe so great a debt, that prior to going to sea I was, as some writers love to say, not entirely unconnected with trade, having for two or three years been employed with varying degrees of unsuccess by small tradesmen as an errand boy, etc. In this wise (although I feel sure that none of my employers would have suspected me of it), I absorbed some germs of a commercial spirit, did at any rate acquire the rudiments of trade, although in most irregular and entirely erratic ways. During my sea-career, these germs lay entirely dormant, unfruitful; but they were undoubtedly tenacious of life, as we learn that disease germs always are; and so, when I forsook the sea upon an offer of a job ashore, a fitting environment aroused them, and they sprang into active life. Not of course immediately, a period of incubation was needed. It was readily forthcoming. At the age of twenty-five, I deliberately turned my back upon a profession that then offered me nothing better than mate of a tramp at £6 per month, and accepted a berth in a public office ashore at £2 per week, having a wife and one child, and no stick of furniture for a home.