But ere the laugh was done the park would come through the map like a blot.
'If you could only be sure of as much as would keep body and soul together,' my mother would say with a sigh.
'With something over, mother, to send to you.' 'You couldna expect that at the start.' The wench I should have been courting now was journalism, that grisette of literature who has a smile and a hand for all beginners, welcoming them at the threshold, teaching them so much that is worth knowing, introducing them to the other lady whom they have worshipped from afar, showing them even how to woo her, and then bidding them a bright God-speed--he were an ingrate who, having had her joyous companionship, no longer flings her a kiss as they pass.

But though she bears no ill-will when she is jilted, you must serve faithfully while you are hers, and you must seek her out and make much of her, and, until you can rely on her good-nature (note this), not a word about the other lady.
When at last she took me in I grew so fond of her that I called her by the other's name, and even now I think at times that there was more fun in the little sister, but I began by wooing her with contributions that were all misfits.

In an old book I find columns of notes about works projected at this time, nearly all to consist of essays on deeply uninteresting subjects; the lightest was to be a volume on the older satirists, beginning with Skelton and Tom Nash--the half of that manuscript still lies in a dusty chest--the only story was about Mary Queen of Scots, who was also the subject of many unwritten papers.

Queen Mary seems to have been luring me to my undoing ever since I saw Holyrood, and I have a horrid fear that I may write that novel yet.

That anything could be written about my native place never struck me.