Now among my many deficiencies I was always painfully conscious of a lack of mechanical genius, or even aptitude. As before noted, I could not drive a nail without bending it, or turn a screw without burring the head. Yet one day it chanced that I stood in the shop of an acquaintance of mine watching him make picture-frames, and the thought occurred to me that I could learn to do likewise, and thus perhaps utilise my spare time, and earn a little money into the bargain. Thenceforward I was a frequent visitor to him, and my questions were many, but, such was my shyness that I never asked for a practical lesson. While in this absorbent frame of mind a canvasser called at our office with some rather good steel engravings for sale. They were in monthly parts of three in paper portfolios with descriptive letterpress, and were entitled the "Imperial Gallery of British Art." Price five shillings per part, the series to be completed in sixteen parts. As I looked at the beautiful pictures, for, in spite of worn plates and retouching, many of them _were_ beautiful, a scheme sprang to being in my brain. Why should I not subscribe for two sets of engravings, frame them myself, and sell them on my monthly payment system? In about five minutes I had decided that I would venture, and had signed a document burdening me with the payment of ten shillings monthly for sixteen months. After this, I suppose it is useless for me to say that I have or had no speculative instinct, since I thus determined upon so slight a prospect to mortgage such a considerable sum out of my income. But I think it must have been some long dormant _flair_ for business which thus suddenly materialised. However that may be, I was for the time being possessed by my scheme, and frequented the shop where my friend was always making frames more assiduously than ever. I plied him with questions innumerable, all of which he answered very readily, seeing in me a good prospective customer for material in order to carry out my hobby, as he supposed it to be, and never even dreaming that I might be a possible business competitor. I afterwards found that amateur picture frame-makers when properly encouraged make exceedingly good clients to the professional, whose aim it should be to encourage them by all the means in his power to make their own frames. Because it is almost certain that the amateur will spoil far more material than he uses, and that his friends to whom he shows his work with pride will make mental notes of his great inferiority to the work of the professional, and determine never to have any home-made frames themselves. This attitude of the professional towards the amateur is an exceedingly profitable one, and pervades a great many trades, where it is recognised that the man with a hobby is a sort of bubbling well from whence the judicious fosterer of his client's most amiable weakness may draw an ever-increasing profit.