On his day Gresham could write the column and have a hundred lines over by ten o’clock. I, too, found plenty of copy as a rule, though I continued my practice of doing a few paragraphs overnight. But every now and then fearful days would come, when the papers were empty of material for our purposes, and when two out of every half-dozen paragraphs which we did succeed in hammering out were returned deleted on the editor’s proof. The tension at these times used to be acute. The head printer would send up a relay of small and grubby boys to remind us that “On Your Way” was fifty lines short. At ten o’clock he would come in person, and be plaintive. Gresham, the old hand, applied to such occasions desperate remedies. He would manufacture out of even the most pointless item of news two paragraphs by adding to his first the words, “This reminds us of Mr. Punch’s famous story.” He would then go through the bound volumes of _Punch_—we had about a dozen in the room—with lightning speed until he chanced upon a more or less appropriate tag. Those were mornings when verses would be padded out from three stanzas to five, Gresham turning them out under fifteen minutes. He had a wonderful facility for verse. As a last expedient one fell back upon a standing column, a moth-eaten collection of alleged jests which had been set up years ago to meet the worst emergencies. It was, however, considered a confession of weakness and a degradation to use this column. We had also in our drawer a book of American witticisms, published in New York. To cut one out, preface it with “A good American story comes to hand,” and pin it on a slip was a pleasing variation of the usual mode of constructing a paragraph. Gresham and I each had our favourite method. Personally, I had always a partiality for dealing with “buffers.” “The brakes refused to act, and the train struck the buffers at the end of the platform” invariably suggested that if elderly gentlemen would abstain from loitering on railway platforms, they would not get hurt in this way. Gresham had a similar liking for “turns.” “The performance at the Frivoli Music Hall was in full swing when the scenery was noticed to be on fire. The audience got a turn. An extra turn.” Julian Eversleigh, to whom I told my experiences on the _Orb_, said he admired the spirit with which I entered into my duties. He said, moreover, that I had a future before me, not only as a journalist, but as a writer. Nor, indeed, could I help seeing for myself that I was getting on. I was making a fair income now, and had every prospect of making a much better one. My market was not restricted. Verses, articles, and fiction from my pen were being accepted with moderate regularity by many of the minor periodicals. My scope was growing distinctly wider. I found, too, that my work seemed to meet with a good deal more success when I sent it in from the _Orb_, with a letter to the editor on _Orb_ notepaper.