"'When a young man my father was bitten by the passion for contributing to the agony column. Some young men spend their money in one way, some in another; this was my father's dissipation. He loved to insert mysterious words and sentences in the advertisement columns of the newspapers, so as to enjoy the sensation of giving food for speculation to a whole people. To sit quietly at home and with a stroke of the pen influence the thoughts of millions of his countrymen--this gave my father the keenest satisfaction. When you come to analyze it, what more does the greatest author do? "'The agony column is the royal road to successful authorship, if the publication of fiction in leading newspapers be any test of success; for my father used sometimes to conduct whole romances by correspondence, after the fashion of the then reigning Wilkie Collins. And the agony column is also the most innocuous method for satisfying that crave for supplying topics of conversation which sometimes leads people to crime. I make this analysis to show you that there was no antecedent improbability about what you seem to consider a wild excuse. The desire to contribute to this department of journalism is no isolated psychical freak; it is related to many other manifestations of mental activity, and is perfectly intelligible. But this desire, like every other, may be given its head till it runs away with the whole man. So it was with my father. He began--half in fun--with a small advertisement, one insertion. Unfortunately--or fortunately--he made a little hit with it. He heard two men discussing it in a café. The next week he tried again--unsuccessfully this time, so far as he knew. But the third advertisement was again a topic of conversation. Even in his own office (he was training for an architect), he heard the fellows saying, "Did you see that funny advertisement this morning--'Be careful not to break the baby.'"