been cured of that delusion after seeing what a mess even so brilliant a journalist as Stead made of the attempt to control the policy of a nation from an editor's desk. CHAPTER XVI. NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. "The Lumley Entail"--"Gladys Fane"--My Experience in Novel Writing--About Sad Endings--Imaginary Characters and Characters Drawn from Life--Visits from William Black and Bret Harte--Black as an After-Dinner Sneaker--How Bret Harte saw Haworth Parsonage, and was Roughly Entreated by a Yorkshire Admirer--A Candid Opinion on the Brontë Monograph. I now propose to hark back a little in order to bring together some reminiscences and experiences that lie apart from the graver political events with which I have been dealing. To begin with, I made a serious attempt at novel-writing in 1883. Perhaps my friendship with William Black and James Payn had some influence in leading me to revert to a kind of work which in my youth had attracted me greatly. I had already, as I have said, written one novel, "The Lumley Entail," published in the _St. James's Magazine_, and long since forgotten by everybody, including its author. I had begun half-a-dozen different stories at various times, but had always failed to make much progress with them. One or two short stories that had appeared in Christmas Numbers of the _Leeds Mercury_ and sundry magazines had not been wholly unsuccessful, and so, after long cogitation, in the year 1883 I wrote "Gladys Fane: A Story of Two Lives." Of its merits I cannot speak, but it gave me great pleasure to write it, and it had a friendly reception both from the critics and the public. In this country it had a very large sale, and in the United States a still larger. The strange thing is that here the book still sells, and once a year I receive from the publisher, Mr. Fisher Unwin, a modest sum in payment of the royalties due to me on the sales.