It was so unsuitable even then, that he hardly expected his name to do much for it, and the half-hour he devoted to persuading his literary conscience to let him send it was very uncomfortable indeed.

Privately he thought any journalist would be rather an ass to print it, yet he sincerely hoped the editor of the _London Magazine_ would prove himself such an ass.

He selected the _London Magazine_ because it seemed to him that the quality of its matter had lately been slightly deteriorating.

A few days later, when he dropped in at the office, impatient at the delay, to ask the fate of the article, he was distinctly, disappointed to find that the editor had failed to approach it in the character he had mentally assigned to him.

That gentleman took the manuscript out of the left-hand drawer of his writing-table, and fingered, the pages over with a kind of disparaging consideration before handing it back, "I'm very sorry, Cardiff, but we can't do anything with this, I'm afraid.