"Teach you journalism!" I echoed, wondering by what unperceived alchemy I myself, but yesterday a tyro, had been metamorphosed into a professor of the most comprehensive of all crafts. "I am told you are the best person to come to," he said. "Why not?" I thought. "Why shouldn't I?" I have never refused work when the pay has been good. I named a fee that might have frightened him, but it did not. And so it fell out that I taught journalism to him, and to others, for a year or two. This vocation suited me; I had an aptitude for it; and my fame spread abroad. Some of the greatest experts in London complimented me on my methods and my results. Other and more ambitious schemes, however, induced me to abandon this lucrative field, which was threatening to grow tiresome. XI I come now to a question only less delicate than that of the conflict of sexes in journalism--the question of reviewing, which, however, I shall treat with more freedom. If I have an aptitude for anything at all in letters, it is for criticism. Whenever I read a work of imagination, I am instantly filled with ideas concerning it; I form definite views about its merit or demerit, and having formed them, I hold those views with strong conviction. Denial of them rouses me; I must thump the table in support of them; I must compel people to believe that what I say is true; I cannot argue without getting serious in spite of myself. In literature, but in nothing else, I am a propagandist; I am not content to keep my opinion and let others keep theirs. To have a worthless book in my house (save in the way of business), to know that any friend of mine is enjoying it, actually distresses me. That book must go, the pretensions of that book must be exposed, if I am to enjoy peace of mind. Some may suspect that I am guilty here of the affectation of a pose. Really it is not so. I often say to myself, after the heat of an argument, a denunciation, or a defence: "What does it matter, fool? The great mundane movement will continue, the terrestrial ball will roll on." But will it? Something must matter, after all, or the mundane movement emphatically would not continue. And the triumph of a good book, and the ignominy of a bad book, matter to me.