Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Internet Archive.) [Illustration: book's cover] MY FIRST BOOK PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE LONDON [Illustration: signed: Yours sincerely, Jerome K. Jerome] MY FIRST BOOK THE EXPERIENCES OF WALTER BESANT JAMES PAYN W. CLARK RUSSELL GRANT ALLEN HALL CAINE GEORGE R. SIMS RUDYARD KIPLING A. CONAN DOYLE M. E. BRADDON F. W. ROBINSON H. RIDER HAGGARD R. M. BALLANTYNE I. ZANGWILL MORLEY ROBERTS DAVID CHRISTIE MURRAY MARIE CORELLI JEROME K. JEROME JOHN STRANGE WINTER BRET HARTE 'Q.' ROBERT BUCHANAN ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JEROME K. JEROME _AND 185 ILLUSTRATIONS_ London CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY 1894 INTRODUCTION By JEROME K. JEROME 'Please, sir,' he said, 'could you tell me the right time?' 'Twenty minutes to eight,' I replied, looking at my watch. 'Oh,' he remarked. Then added for my information after a pause: 'I haven't got to be in till half-past eight.' After that we fell back into our former silence, and sat watching the murky twilight, he at his end of the park seat, I at mine. 'And do you live far away?' I asked, lest, he having miscalculated, the short legs might be hard put to it. 'Oh no, only over there,' he answered, indicating with a sweep of his arm the northern half of London where it lay darkening behind the chimney-fringed horizon; 'I often come and sit here.' It seemed an odd pastime for so very small a citizen. 'And what makes you like to come and sit here?' I said. 'Oh, I don't know,' he replied, 'I think.' 'And what do you think about?' 'Oh--oh, lots of things.' He inspected me shyly out of the corner of his eye, but, satisfied apparently by the scrutiny, he sidled up a little nearer. 'Mama does not like this evening time,' he confided to me; 'it always makes her cry. But then,' he went on to explain, 'Mama has had a lot of trouble, and that makes anyone feel different about things, you know.' I agreed that this was so. 'And do you like this evening time?' I enquired. 'Yes,' he answered; 'don't you?' 'Yes, I like it too,' I admitted. 'But tell me why you like it, then I will tell you why I like it.' 'Oh,' he replied, 'things come to you.' 'What things?' I asked. Again his critical eye passed over me, and it raised me in my own conceit to find that again the inspection contented him, he evidently feeling satisfied that here was a man to whom another gentleman might speak openly and without reserve. He wriggled sideways, slipping his hands beneath him and sitting on them. 'Oh, fancies,' he explained; 'I'm going to be an author when I grow up, and write books.'