having refused a dozen times the work of a strand whom he was in the habit of of a young han treating he would say send it in my boy send it in i ll see what can be done with it there was a long counter and the way to be published by mr b was to on the counter and play with a black cat there was an behind this counter who for three pounds a week the magazine read the ms looked after the and kept the accounts when he had a spare moment and entertained the visitors i did not trouble messrs and messrs with polite to look at my ms but on the counter played with the cat with the was treated by mr b and in the natural order of things my stories went into the magazine and were paid for strange were the ways of this office shakespeare might have sent in prose and poetry but he would have gone into the waste paper basket had he not previously for those who were in the swim this was a matter of we would cry we want no blooming coming along interfering with our magazine and you smith you devil you had a twenty page story in last month and cut me out o do you mind if i send you in a couple of poems as well as my regular stuff that will make it all square i ll try to manage it here s the governor and looking exactly like the unfortunate mr mr b used to along and he would fall into his leather the one in which he wrote the the last time i saw that chair it was standing in the street alas in the hands of the but though we were in matters concerning copy though all means were taken to protect ourselves against one who had not passed the l of a young preliminary stage of would occasionally slip through our i remember one especially it was a hot summer s day we were all on the counter our legs swinging when an enormous young man entered he must have been six feet three in height he was shown into mr b s room he asked him to read a ms and he fled looking very frightened waste paper basket waste paper basket we shouted when mr b handed us the roll of paper what an odd looking fish he is said o i wonder what his ms is like we remonstrated in tain o took the ms home to read and returned next morning convinced that he had discovered an the young men was asked to call his book was accepted and we to the bar a few weeks afterwards this young man took rooms in the house next to me on the ground floor he was terribly with his success and was clearly determined to take london by storm he had been to oxford and to he drank beer and smoked long pipes he talked of nothing else soon very soon i grew conscious that he thought me a he my belief in and declined to discuss the question he curled his long legs upon the sofa and spoke of the british public as the b p and of the magazine as the there were generally tea things and jam pots on the table in a little while he brought a little creature about five feet three to live with with him and when the little creature and the long creature went out together it was like don and setting forth in quest of in the land of strand the little creature indulged in none of the loud affectation of of a young man s humor that was so in the long creature the little creature was dry hard and and when he did join in the conversation it was like an empty nut between the teeth � dusty and bitter he was supposed to be going in for the law but the part of him to which he drew our attention was his knowledge of the he kept a pocket book in which he held an account of his reading holding the pocket book between finger and thumb he would say last year i read ten plays by twelve by six by fifteen by and and eleven plays � fifty four in all he neither praised nor blamed he neither nor he told you what he had read and left you to draw your own conclusions what the little creature thought of the long creature i never discovered but with every new hour i became sensible that they held me in still estimation this i remember was wildly to me i knew myself infinitely superior to them i knew the long creature s novel was worthless i knew that i bad fifty books in me better than it and savagely and sullenly i desired to upon them to rub their noses in their but oh it was i who was feeble and full of visions of a wider world i raged up and down the cold walls of mental above me there was a barred window and but for my i would have sprung at it with my teeth then passion was so strong in me that i could scarce refrain from jumping off the counter stamping my feet and my friends in the face so were their so thin did their understanding appear to me the seemed inclined for a moment to ss op a young han take the long creature very seriously and in the office which i had marked down for my own i saw him as a genius fortunately for my life and my my interests were about this time attracted into other ways � ways that led into london life and were suitable for me to tread in a where low dresses and evening clothes crushed with loud exclamations 