On our first arrival in Leipzig my father sought literary employment from the great publishers of that city of books, and soon obtained all the “review” and “hack” writing that he wished. He encouraged me to help him in the work, and in my training probably lay his chief inducement, for he was paid at starvation rates in that land of hungry authors. The labor quickly taught me the technical part of authorship, the rock which has wrecked so many hopes. Our work brought us, too, the acquaintance of many literary men, and thus gave us our pleasantest society, and one peculiarly fitted to develop me. Furthermore, we secured command of the unlimited books stored on the publishers’ shelves, which we used as freely as if they were our own private library. Very quickly I began to do more than help my father in his work; I myself tried to write. He put many a manuscript in the fire, after going over the faults with me, but finally I wrote something that he let me send to an editor. His admirable judgment must have been warped by his fatherly love, for the article was rejected. A like fate befell many others, but at last one was accepted, and I do not know which of us was the more delighted when it was published in the “Zeitschrift für Deutsche Philologie.” By my father’s advice it was signed with a pseudonym; for he pointed out that I was still too young for editors who knew me to give my manuscript a reading, and that a German name would command greater respect from them than an English one. I received twenty marks for that first article, and spent it in secret the next day. Had you known of my pleasure in the gift, and the hopes that went with it, I think you would have sent a line of acknowledgment to the hungry-hearted fellow who, after four years of separation, still longed for a token from you. Three times had I written, without response, but I thought the beauty of the photograph would so appeal to you that it must bring me back a word from you, and lived in the hope for six months. My father joked me genially about what I had done with that vast wealth, pretending at moments that he believed it had been avariciously hoarded, and at other times that it had been squandered in riotous living, till one day, when all hope of acknowledgment had died, his chaff wrung from me an exclamation of pain, suppressed too late to be concealed from him. So closely attuned had we become that he understood in an instant what it meant, and, laying his hand on my shoulder, he appealed, “Forgive me, my boy! I have been very cruel in my thoughtlessness!”