A Literary Mosaic

From my boyhood I have had an intense and overwhelming conviction
that my real vocation lay in the direction of literature. I have,
however, had a most unaccountable difficulty in getting any
responsible person to share my views. It is true that private
friends have sometimes, after listening to my effusions, gone the
length of remarking, "Really, Smith, that's not half bad!" or, "You
take my advice, old boy, and send that to some magazine!" but I
have never on these occasions had the moral courage to inform my
adviser that the article in question had been sent to well-nigh
every publisher in London, and had come back again with a rapidity
and precision which spoke well for the efficiency of our postal
arrangements.

Had my manuscripts been paper boomerangs they could not have
returned with greater accuracy to their unhappy dispatcher. Oh,
the vileness and utter degradation of the moment when the stale
little cylinder of closely written pages, which seemed so fresh and
full of promise a few days ago, is handed in by a remorseless
postman! And what moral depravity shines through the
editor's ridiculous plea of "want of space!" But the subject is a
painful one, and a digression from the plain statement of facts
which I originally contemplated.

From the age of seventeen to that of three-and-twenty I was a
literary volcano in a constant state of eruption. Poems and tales,
articles and reviews, nothing came amiss to my pen. From the great
sea-serpent to the nebular hypothesis, I was ready to write on
anything or everything, and I can safely say that I seldom handled
a subject without throwing new lights upon it. Poetry and romance,
however, had always the greatest attractions for me. How I have
wept over the pathos of my heroines, and laughed at the
comicalities of my buffoons! Alas! I could find no one to join me
in my appreciation, and solitary admiration for one's self, however
genuine, becomes satiating after a time. My father remonstrated
with me too on the score of expense and loss of time, so that I was
finally compelled to relinquish my dreams of literary independence
and to become a clerk in a wholesale mercantile firm connected with
the West African trade.

Even when condemned to the prosaic duties which fell to my lot in
the office, I continued faithful to my first love. I have
introduced pieces of word-painting into the most commonplace
business letters which have, I am told, considerably astonished the
recipients. My refined sarcasm has made defaulting creditors
writhe and wince. Occasionally, like the great Silas Wegg, I would
drop into poetry, and so raise the whole tone of the
correspondence. Thus what could be more elegant than my rendering
of the firm's