“We have just received,” said the Editor, “a page advertisement from Pschuffer. I would like a really good article, and you might use the book as a kind of peg on which to hang it. You might begin on the subject of snails, and make it something more like your ‘_Oh! my lost friend_,’ which has had such a success.” On occasions such as these the beginner must remember to keep full possession of himself. Nothing in this mortal life is permanent, and the changes that are native to the journalistic career are perhaps the most startling and frequent of all those which threaten humanity. The Reviewer of whom I speak was as wise as he was honourable. He saw at once what was needed. He wrote another and much longer article, beginning-- “_The Snail: Its Habitat_, &c. Adam Charles. Pschuffer. 21s. 6d. “There are tender days just before the Spring dares the adventure of the Channel, when our Kentish woods are prescient, as it were, of the South. It is calm ...” and so forth, leading gradually up to snails, and bringing in the book here and there about every twentieth line. When this long article was done, he took it back to the office, and there found the Editor in yet a third mood. He was talking into the telephone, and begged his visitor to wait until he had done. My friend, therefore, took up a copy of the _Spectator_, and attempted to distract his attention with the masterful irony and hard crystalline prose of that paper. Soon the Editor turned to him and said that Pschuffer’s had just let him know by the telephone that they would not advertise after all. It was now necessary to delete all that there might be upon snails in his article, to head the remainder “My Kentish Home,” and to send it immediately to “_Life in the Open_.” This done, he sat down and wrote upon a scrap of paper in the office the following revised notice, which the Editor glanced at and approved:-- “_The Snail: Its Habitat_, &c. Adam Charles. Pschuffer. 21s. 6d. “This work will, perhaps, appeal to specialists. This journal does not profess any capacity of dealing with it, but a glance at its pages is sufficient to show that it would be very ill-suited to ordinary readers. The illustrations are not without merit.” Next morning he was somewhat perturbed to be called up again upon the telephone by the Editor, who spoke to him as follows:-- “I am very sorry, but I have just learnt a most important fact. Adam Charles is standing in our interests at Biggleton. Lord Bailey will be on the platform. You must write a long and favourable review of the book before twelve to-day, and do try and say a little about the author.” He somewhat wearily took up a sheet of paper and wrote what follows:--a passage which I must again recommend to the student as a very admirable specimen of work upon these lines. “_The Snail: Its Habitat_, &c. Adam Charles. Pschuffer. 21s. 6d.