And they had the sense; they even had the sense not to wait until I asked. I have before remarked that the thumb of my Fate has always been turned up. Still on the glorious side of thirty, still young, enthusiastic, and a prey to delightful illusions, I suddenly found myself the editor of a London weekly paper. It was not a leading organ, but it was a London weekly paper, and it had pretensions; at least I had. My name was inscribed in various annuals of reference. I dined as an editor with other editors. I remember one day sitting down to table in a populous haunt of journalists with no less than four editors. "Three years ago," I said to myself, "I should have deemed this an impossible fairy tale." I know now that there are hundreds of persons in London and elsewhere who regard even editors with gentle and condescending toleration. One learns. I needed a sub-editor, and my first act was to acquire one. I had the whole world of struggling lady-journalists to select from: to choose was an almost sublime function. For some months previously we had been receiving paragraphs and articles from an outside contributor whose _flair_ in the discovery of subjects, whose direct simplicity of style and general tidiness of "copy," had always impressed me. I had never seen her, and I knew nothing about her; but I decided that, if she pleased, this lady should be my sub-editor. I wrote desiring her to call, and she called. Without much preface I offered her the situation; she accepted it. "Who recommended me to you?" she asked. "No one," I replied, in the rôle of Joseph Pulitzer; "I liked your stuff." It was a romantic scene. I mention it because I derived a child-like enjoyment from that morning. Vanity was mixed up in it; but I argued--If you are an editor, be an editor imaginatively. I seemed to resemble Louis the Fifteenth beginning to reign after the death of the Regent, but with no troublesome Fleury in the background. "Now," I cried, "up goes the circulation!"