Just about this time, I was delighted by the acceptance of an article I had written, by the editor of _Chambers's Journal_, a magazine which I had known and admired all my life, although I think it was called _Chambers's Miscellany_, "When that I was a little tiny boy," I had also imagined that the publication of a story or an article by anybody in those familiar double-column pages conferred a sort of brevet rank upon the writer of which no one could rob him; and in addition to all this the cheque which I received with (to me) amazing promptitude, was three times as much as I had previously received for an article of nearly the same length. So that altogether I felt uplifted and heartened, although the idea of literature as a profession still never occurred to me, especially as I was rapidly nearing forty, and feeling very often double that. I fully believed that at forty a man's career was irrevocably fixed; if he had done nothing worthy of note before, he would certainly never do anything after, and all the stirring adventure of my early days had been completely overlaid by the dull drab round of my clerkly duties through so many years, to say nothing of the other jejune, undramatic, commonplace matters of which I have been writing in these pages. Only, and this I would like to lay stress upon, there was a glow of strange delight in my heart, to find that when I took my pen in hand and sat down to write, all that early life on many seas stood out bold and clear upon the background of my mind, and I lived its incidents over and over again. Little did any of my infrequent customers think when they came into the shop and saw me writing as if for dear life, as I leaned over the counter, that I was lost in the resuscitated life of a quarter of a century before. And strange to say, at least to me, as soon as I laid down the pen all the vivid reality vanished, and I was as eager to get an order for a five-shilling frame, or to sell a couple of little pictures that I had framed on speculation, as if I had never done anything else all my life. Occasionally, however, my eagerness departed, as when one day a lady came in and purchased all the framed Mildmay texts I had in the place, telling me that she was going to present them to a church bazaar. Of course I cut the price to the bone, as we say, for I thought I must not miss so good a chance of getting rid of stock that had been on hand for a long time; so I charged her just about half what the things cost me in materials. Her order came to thirty shillings, and she said when about to pay me, "Of course you'll give me twenty-five per cent. discount, I always get that for bazaar goods!"