My first novel was now written, but I had still to get it published. In my early days in London, while trying to live in the outer court of a calling wherein the struggle for existence is keenest and bitterest and cruellest, I conceived one day the idea of offering myself as a reader to the publishers. With this view I called on several of that ilk, who have perhaps no recollection of my early application. I recall my interview with one of them. He was sitting at a table when I was taken into his room, and he never once raised his head from his papers to look at me. I just remember that he had a neck like a three-decker, and a voice like a peahen's. 'Well, sir?' he said. I mentioned the object of my visit. 'What can you read?' 'Novels and poems,' I answered. 'Don't publish either--good day,' he said, and I went out. But one of the very best, and quite, I think, the very oldest of publishers now living, received me differently. 'Come into my own room,' he said. It was a lovely little place, full of an atmosphere that recalled the publishing house of the old days, half office, half study; a workshop where books might be made, not turned out by machinery. I read many manuscripts for that publisher, and must have learned much by the experience. And now that my novel was finished I took it to him first. He offered to publish it the following year. That did not suit me, and I took my book elsewhere. Next day I was offered 50_l._ for my copyright. That was wages at the rate of about four shillings a day for the time I had been actually engaged upon the work, sweating brain and heart and every faculty. Nevertheless, one of my friends urged me to accept it. 'Why?' I asked. 'Because it is a story of the past, and therefore not one publisher in ten will look at it.' I used strong language, and then took my novel to Chatto & Windus. Within a few hours Mr. Chatto made me an offer which I accepted. The book is now, I think, in its fifteenth edition.