The principal local daily offered to buy approved short stories from local readers at a guinea apiece. Immediately I wrote one. What, beyond the chance of a guinea, made me turn so suddenly to literature I cannot guess; it was eight years since I had sat down as a creative artist. But I may mention here that I have never once produced any literary work without a preliminary incentive quite other than the incentive of ebullient imagination. I have never "wanted to write," until the extrinsic advantages of writing had presented themselves to me. I cannot recall that I found any difficulty in concocting the story. The heroine was named Leonora, and after having lost sight of her for years, the hero discovered her again as a great actress in a great play. (Miss Ellen Terry in "Faust" had passed disturbingly athwart my existence.) I remember no more. The story was refused. But I firmly believe that for a boy of nineteen it was something of an achievement. No one saw it except myself and the local editor; it was a secret, and now it is a lost secret. Soon afterwards another local newspaper advertised for a short serial of local interest. Immediately I wrote the serial, again without difficulty. It was a sinister narrative to illustrate the evils of marrying a drunken woman. (I think I had just read "L'Assommoir" in Vizetelly's original edition of Zola.) There was a street in our town named Commercial Street. I laid the scene there, and called it Speculation Street. I know not what satiric criticism of modern life was involved in that change of name. This serial too was refused; I suspect that it was entirely without serial interest. I had matriculated at London University three years before, and was then working, without heart, for a law degree (which I never won); instead of Ouida my nights were given to Austin's Jurisprudence, the Institutes of Justinian and of Gaius, and Maine's Ancient Law; the last is a great and simple book, but it cannot be absorbed and digested while the student is pre-occupied with the art of fiction. Out of an unwilling respect for the University of London, that august negation of the very idea of a University, I abandoned literature. As to water-colours, my tubes had dried up long since; and house-decoration was at a standstill.