intimation: "Lodgings for a Single Man," which caught the eye a
few days later of a weird-looking, lanky, rawboned laddie, whose
language Mrs. Postwhistle found difficulty for a time in
comprehending; and that is why one sometimes meets to-day
worshippers of Kail Yard literature wandering disconsolately about
St. Dunstan-in-the-West, seeking Rolls Court, discomforted because
it is no more. But that is the history of the "Wee Laddie," and
this of the beginnings of William Clodd, now Sir William Clodd,
Bart., M.P., proprietor of a quarter of a hundred newspapers,
magazines, and journals: "Truthful Billy" we called him then.

No one can say of Clodd that he did not deserve whatever profit his
unlicensed lunatic asylum may have brought him. A kindly man was
William Clodd when indulgence in sentiment did not interfere with
business.

"There's no harm in him," asserted Mr. Clodd, talking the matter
over with one Mr. Peter Hope, journalist, of Gough Square. "He's
just a bit dotty, same as you or I might get with nothing to do and
all day long to do it in. Kid's play, that's all it is. The best
plan, I find, is to treat it as a game and take a hand in it. Last
week he wanted to be a lion. I could see that was going to be
awkward, he roaring for raw meat and thinking to prowl about the
house at night. Well, I didn't nag him--that's no good. I just
got a gun and shot him. He's a duck now, and I'm trying to keep
him one: sits for an hour beside his bath on three china eggs I've
bought him. Wish some of the sane ones were as little trouble."

The summer came again. Clodd and his Lunatic, a mild-looking
little old gentleman of somewhat clerical cut, one often met with