I worked extraordinarily hard at that time. All day, sometimes. The
thought of Margie waiting in Guernsey kept me writing when I should
have done better to have taken a rest. My earnings were small in
proportion to my labour. The guineas I made, except from verse, were
like the ounce of gold to the ton of ore. I no longer papered the walls
with rejection forms; but this was from choice, not from necessity. I
had plenty of material, had I cared to use it.

I made a little money, of course. My takings for the first month
amounted to L9 10s. I notched double figures in the next with Lll 1s.
6d. Then I dropped to L7 0s. 6d. It was not starvation, but it was
still more unlike matrimony.

But at the end of the sixth month there happened to me what, looking
back, I consider to be the greatest piece of good fortune of my life. I
received a literary introduction. Some authorities scoff at literary
introductions. They say that editors read everything, whether they know
the author or not. So they do; and, if the work is not good, a letter
to the editor from a man who once met his cousin at a garden-party is
not likely to induce him to print it. There is no journalistic "ring"
in the sense in which the word is generally used; but there are
undoubtedly a certain number of men who know the ropes, and can act as
pilots in a strange sea; and an introduction brings one into touch with
them. There is a world of difference between contributing blindly work
which seems suitable to the style of a paper and sending in matter
designed to attract the editor personally.

Mr. Macrae, whose pupil I had been at Cambridge, was the author of my
letter of introduction. At St. Gabriel's, Mr. Macrae had been a man for