At all events, I know I achieved some success with articles in the _Chronicle_ of a sort which no experienced journalist could write, save with his tongue in his cheek; and tongue-in-the-cheek writing never really impressed anybody. What seems even more strange to me, in the light of later life and experience, is the fact that upon several occasions I proved of some value to the business side of the _Chronicle_. My efforts actually brought the concern money, and increased circulation. I find this most surprising, but I know it happened. There were due solely to my initiative 'interviews' with sundry leading lights in commerce, and in the professional sporting world, which were highly profitable to the paper; and this at a time when the 'interview' was a thing practically unknown in Australian journalism. Stimulated perhaps by the remarks of the good Mr. Smith, my room-mate, I planned ventures of this kind in bed, descending fully armed with them upon Mr. Foster by day, in most cases to fire him, more or less, by my own enthusiasm. Upon the whole I earned my pay pretty well while working for the _Chronicle_, even having regard to the several small increases made therein. If I lacked ability and experience, I gave more than most of my colleagues, perhaps, in concentration and initiative. The two things most salient, I think, which befell in this phase of my life were my determination to go to England, and my only adolescent love affair; this, as distinguished from the sentimental episodes of infancy and childhood, which with me had been a rather prolific crop. The determination to make my way to England, the land of my fathers, did not take definite shape until comedy, with a broad smile, rang down the curtain upon my love affair. But I fancy it had been a long while in the making. I am not sure but what the germ of it began to stir a little in its husk even at St. Peter's Orphanage; I feel sure it did while I browsed upon English fiction in my little wooden room beside the tool-shed at Dursley. It was near the surface from the time I began to visit Mr. Rawlence's studio in Macquarie Street, and busily developing from that time onward, though it did not become a visible and admitted growth, with features and a shape of its own, until more than two years had elapsed. Then, quite suddenly, I recognised it, and told myself it was for this really that I had been 'saving up.'