About two months before the opening day I wrote to him suggesting that
he should accept from me a series of four short stories on which I was
engaged. I got back a long letter in which he said nothing about my
short stories, but asking whether I could go to work at once and let him
have a long novel, so that it might begin with the first number. At the
same time I heard from the publisher, who suggested some interesting
little details as to honorarium. The little details were very
interesting, but absolutely no time was allowed to me. It was required
that the first portion of my book should be in the printer's hands
within a month. Now it was my theory,--and ever since this occurrence
has been my practice,--to see the end of my own work before the public
should see the commencement.[4] If I did this thing I must not only
abandon my theory, but instantly contrive a story, or begin to write it
before it was contrived. That was what I did, urged by the interesting
nature of the details. A novelist cannot always at the spur of the
moment make his plot and create his characters who shall, with an
arranged sequence of events, live with a certain degree of eventful
decorum, through that portion of their lives which is to be portrayed. I
hesitated, but allowed myself to be allured to what I felt to be wrong,
much dreading the event. How seldom is it that theories stand the wear
and tear of practice! I will not say that the story which came was good,
but it was received with greater favour than any I had written before or
have written since. I think that almost anything would have been then
accepted coming under Thackeray's editorship.

I was astonished that work should be required in such haste, knowing
that much preparation had been made, and that the service of almost any
English novelist might have been obtained if asked for in due time. It
was my readiness that was needed, rather than any other gift! The riddle
was read to me after a time. Thackeray had himself intended to begin