His reply, perhaps made with a little reluctance, was that he had published nothing, and again the suspicion recurred to me that this nervous youth, who stood in such evident anxiety before me, must somehow have become possessed of these drawings which he was trying to palm off as his own. He was, as I found on questioning him, engaged in making drawings for trade advertisements in the firm of Maclure, Macdonald and Macgregor, confessedly not a very promising experience upon which to base his claim to be engaged on the staff of an established magazine. And yet, as I looked first at him and then at the drawings he had submitted to me, I felt I could not let him go without a trial, and, still in my doubtful mood, I suggested to him that he should execute a drawing, the subject of which was to be chosen by me, and that I would give him a fortnight to see what he could make of it. Almost at hazard I asked him to make a drawing illustrating the social life of Pall Mall during the later days of the eighteenth century, and the quick look of pleasure with which he accepted the task at once drove from my mind any remnant of suspicion with which I had at first received him. Within a fortnight he returned with a very remarkable essay for a youth, and I afterwards published it in the pages of the Magazine. From that day he became a constant contributor to its pages, and when the series of drawings illustrating Sir Roger de Coverley were ultimately gathered into book form, he at once made his mark with all who were competent to judge. [Illustration: _Hollyer_ JAMES MARTINEAU From the painting by G. F. WATTS, R.A., in the National Portrait Gallery. _To face page 167._ ] CHAPTER XIII ORATORS From a very early time the art of oratory attracted me strongly. I remember, as a boy, my father reading to us the full report in the _Times_ of Edwin James’s defence of Orsini; and in later days, during my apprenticeship in the city, I began from time to time to attend debates in the House of Commons. It was at about the same time that my friend Alan Skinner and I used to find ourselves Sunday after Sunday in the little chapel in Great Portland Street listening to the great Unitarian preacher, James Martineau.