To say that I returned home elated would not be exactly true. Bewildered
would more accurately describe my state of mind. I had genuinely
believed that my attempt to give the final word of criticism upon
_Gulliver's Travels_--that is what a young man always thinks, and
ought to think, he is doing in the matter of literary criticism--had
been a total failure. Surely I couldn't be wrong about my own work. Yet
_The Spectator_ editors were evidently not mad or pulling my leg or
even flattering me! It was a violent mystery.

Of course I was pleased at heart, but I tried to unload some of my
liabilities to Nemesis by the thought that my new patrons would probably
get tired of my manner of writing before very long. What had captured
them for the moment was merely a certain novelty of style. They would
very soon see through it, as I had done in my poignant self-criticism.
But this prudent view was before long, in a couple of days, to be exact,
knocked on the head by a delightful letter which Mr. Townsend wrote to
my father. In it he expressed himself even more strongly in regard to
the review than he had done in speaking to me.

I honestly think that what I liked best in the whole business was the
element of adventure. There was something thrilling and, so, intensely
delightful to me in the thought, that I had walked down to Wellington
Street, like a character in a novel, prepared for a setback, only to
find that Fate was there, "hid in an auger-hole," ready to rush and
seize me. Somehow or other I felt, though I would not admit it even to
myself, that the incident had been written in the Book of Destiny, and
that it was one which was going to affect my whole life. Of course,
being, like other young men, a creature governed wholly by reason and
good sense, I scouted the notion of a destined day as sentimental and