O’Neil, who was older than I, and who had already had some slight experiences as a journalist, with a desire to encourage my budding ambition, asked me to do a criticism on a recently published volume of Longfellow’s Poems for this same _Dramatic and Musical Review_, of which he was the proud editor. I duly received and duly corrected the printed proof of my article with feelings of exaltation only to be realised by those who, for the first time, see their ideas in printed type, and then waited with eager expectation for the day of publication. The office was situated in that older part of the Strand near St. Clement Danes which is now no more, and the publisher owned the two-fold responsibility of also issuing another weekly journal entitled the _Labour News_. Twopence was, I think, the price of our artistic organ, and as early as I could on the Saturday morning I presented myself at the office and tendered the sum required. Almost overwhelmed with excitement I rapidly scanned the columns of this slender journal to find the first-fruits of my pen. But my search yielded nothing but disappointment. The article was not there. I stood in the tiny office crushed by a sense of failure and misfortune, and was just going out into the grey street when the enterprising boy behind the counter, actuated by the simple desire to do business, asked me if I wanted a copy of the _Labour News_. As a fact I wanted nothing but some place to hide the sense of humiliation which overpowered me, but as he added, “It’s only a penny,” I took the journal and went out into the street, and, as I listlessly scanned its pages through, I found, to my astonishment, my lost article on Longfellow’s Poems. It turned out afterwards that the _Dramatic and Musical Review_ in that particular week had more than its needed supply of “copy,” and the _Labour News_, on the other hand, finding itself short of material, a bright idea had come into the printer’s mind that the review of Longfellow’s Poems might be appropriately set beside advertisements as to the advantages of Canadian Emigration. Little by little, from this first ludicrous start, I gained a modest footing in the world of journalism, at first as dramatic critic to the _Echo_, then edited by Arthur Arnold, brother of Sir Edwin Arnold, so long connected with the _Daily Telegraph_. My services upon the _Echo_ were not particularly lucrative, the payment for an article being rarely more than six or seven shillings; and my fare to and from Clapham Junction, where we lived at the time, and the necessary modest meal before the theatre began, almost entirely absorbed the sum that I earned. From the _Echo_ I drifted to the _Globe_, which was then under the editorship of Dr. Mortimer Granville, and here my work began in something like earnest. During my services as dramatic critic I had become acquainted with Thomas Purnell, and it was he who secured for me a regular position upon the staff of the _Globe_.