directions in which I have some capacity, but the conduct of business
operations is not among these. But in those days I was young, and my youth
among other objectionable forms took that of a pride in my capacity for
affairs. I am young still in years, but the things that have happened to
me have rubbed something of the youth from my mind. Whether they have
brought any wisdom to light below it is a more doubtful matter.

It is scarcely necessary to go into the details of the speculations that
landed me at Lympne, in Kent. Nowadays even about business transactions
there is a strong spice of adventure. I took risks. In these things
there is invariably a certain amount of give and take, and it fell to me
finally to do the giving reluctantly enough. Even when I had got out of
everything, one cantankerous creditor saw fit to be malignant. Perhaps you
have met that flaming sense of outraged virtue, or perhaps you have only
felt it. He ran me hard. It seemed to me, at last, that there was nothing
for it but to write a play, unless I wanted to drudge for my living as a
clerk. I have a certain imagination, and luxurious tastes, and I meant to
make a vigorous fight for it before that fate overtook me. In addition to
my belief in my powers as a business man, I had always in those days had
an idea that I was equal to writing a very good play. It is not, I
believe, a very uncommon persuasion. I knew there is nothing a man can do
outside legitimate business transactions that has such opulent
possibilities, and very probably that biased my opinion. I had, indeed,
got into the habit of regarding this unwritten drama as a convenient
little reserve put by for a rainy day. That rainy day had come, and I set
to work.

I soon discovered that writing a play was a longer business than I had
supposed; at first I had reckoned ten days for it, and it was to have a
pied-a-terre while it was in hand that I came to Lympne. I reckoned myself