mental conflicts that nearly killed me; and learned at last how to live
and work in armour that turned the edge of the weapons that struck it,
and left the flesh beneath unwounded, armour laid aside, but in the
presence of a very few.

My first serious attempts at writing were made in 1868, and I took up
two very different lines of composition; I wrote some short stories of
a very flimsy type, and also a work of a much more ambitious character,
"The Lives of the Black Letter Saints." For the sake of the
unecclesiastically trained it may be as well to mention that in the
Calendar of the Church of England there are a number of Saints' Days;
some of these are printed in red, and are Red Letter Days, for which
services are appointed by the Church; others are printed in black, and
are Black Letter Days, and have no special services fixed for them. It
seemed to me that it would be interesting to take each of these days
and write a sketch of the life of the saint belonging to it, and
accordingly I set to work to do so, and gathered various books of
history and legend where-from to collect my "facts." I do not in the
least know what became of that valuable book; I tried Macmillans with
it, and it was sent on by them to some one who was preparing a series
of Church books for the young; later I had a letter from a Church
brotherhood offering to publish it, if I would give it as "an act of
piety" to their order; its ultimate fate is to me unknown.

The short stories were more fortunate. I sent the first to the _Family
Herald_, and some weeks afterwards received a letter from which dropped
a cheque as I opened it. Dear me! I have earned a good deal of money
since by my pen, but never any that gave me the intense delight of that
first thirty shillings. It was the first money I had ever earned, and
the pride of the earning was added to the pride of authorship. In my