When I had recovered from my stupefaction, I glowed with pride. What a fine thing to be highly-strung, nervously organized! I saw myself in a new light; I thought better of myself; I rather looked down on cool, ingenious journalists. Perhaps I dimly suspected that Fleet Street was not to be the end of all things for me. It was soon afterwards that the artists whom I had twitted about their temperament accused me of sharing it with them to the full. Another surprise! I was in a state of ferment then. But I had acquired such a momentum in the composition of articles destined to rejection that I continued throughout this crisis to produce them with a regularity almost stupid. My friends began to inquire into the nature of my ultimate purpose. They spoke of a large work, and I replied that I had no spare time. None could question my industry. "Why don't you write a novel on Sundays?" one of them suggested. The idea was grandiose. To conceive such an idea was a proof of imagination. And the air with which these enthusiasts said these things was entirely splendid and magnificent. But I was just then firmly convinced that I had no vocation for the novel; I had no trace of a desire to emulate Turgenev. Again and again my fine enthusiasts returned to the charge, urged on by I know not what instinct. At last, to please them, to quieten them, I promised to try to write a short story. Without too much difficulty I concocted one concerning an artist's model, and sent it to a weekly which gives a guinea each week for a prize story. My tale won the guinea. "There! We told you so!" was the chorus. And I stood convicted of underestimating my own powers; fault rare enough in my career! However, I insisted that the story was despicably bad, a commercial product, and the reply was that I ought next to write one for art's sake. Instead, I wrote one for morality's sake. It was a story with a lofty purpose, dealing with the tragedy of a courtesan's life. (No, I had not then read "Splendeurs et Misères des Courtisanes.") A prominent philanthropist with a tendency to faddism, who for morality's sake was running a monthly magazine, was much impressed by my tale, and after some trouble--the contributors were supposed to contribute _con amore_--I got another guinea. This story only pleased me for a few weeks; its crudity was too glaring. But I continued to write short stories, and several of them appeared in halfpenny evening papers. Gaining in skill, I aimed political skits in narrative form at the more exclusive, the consciously superior, penny evening papers, and one or two of these hit the mark. I admired the stuff greatly. Lo, I had risen from a concocter of 'bits' articles to be the scorpion-sting of cabinet ministers! My self-confidence began to return.