writing a striking short story nearly every week. Up to that time I had
only interviewed two editors. One was Mr. Kinloch-Cooke, now Sir Clement
Kinloch-Cooke, who at that time was editor of the 'English Illustrated
Magazine', and a very good, courteous, and generous editor he was, and he
had a very good magazine; the other was an editor whose name I do not
care to mention, because his courtesy was not on the same expansive level
as his vanity.

One bitter winter's day in 1891 I went to Wemyss Reid to tell him,
if he would hear me, that I had in my mind a series of short stories of
Australia and the South Seas, and to ask him if he could give them a
place in 'The Speaker'. It was a Friday afternoon, and as I went into
the smudgy little office I saw a gentleman with a small brown bag
emerging from another room.

At that moment I asked for Mr. Wemyss Reid. The gentleman with the
little brown bag stood and looked sharply at me, but with friendly if
penetrating eyes. "I am Wemyss Reid--you wish to see me?" he said.
"Will you give me five minutes?" I asked. "I am just going to the
train, but I will spare you a minute," he replied. He turned back into
another smudgy little room, put his bag on the table, and said: "Well?"
I told him quickly, eagerly, what I wished to do, and I said to him at
last: "I apologise for seeking you personally, but I was most anxious
that my work should be read by your own eyes, because I think I should be
contented with your judgment, whether it was favourable or unfavourable."
Taking up his bag again, he replied, "Send your stories along. If I
think they are what I want I will publish them. I will read them
myself." He turned the handle of the door, and then came back to me and
again looked me in the eyes. "If I cannot use them--and there might be
a hundred reasons why I could not, and none of them derogatory to your