START AT EARNING MONEY 



Pancras Lane, Cheapside. He was a little man 

 connected with City politics, and conducted the old- 

 fashioned publishing business established by his 

 father. When he had had a good look at me he said : 

 " I think you and I will get on all right together." 

 He smoothed down his grey wig, and taking a pen 

 said : " Make out an invoice," and gave me several 

 items ; the result was correct. He called me by my 

 christian name before I had been with him ten minutes, 

 and cried out suddenly : " I think we said fifty pounds 

 a year, didn't we ? " " Yes, sir," I replied, my heart 

 thumping at such a splendid start. He went on to tell 

 me that he wanted me to help him during certain hours 

 of the day in arranging little one-shilling books he was 

 bringing out. The first was a collection of epitaphs, 

 the next one of epigrams, and so on. He doubled 

 my salary within six months, and altogether I was with 

 him nearly three years. At that rate of progression 

 I should have had a daily paper when I was twenty- 

 five, been a rich man at thirty-five, and had honours 

 at forty. But there may be a moral in this book how I 

 missed it all. There was the love of distraction which 

 meant good living and also the belief that I was pretty 

 clever at cards and billiards, and above all that ever- 

 increasing interest in racing. 



Mr Tegg taught me a great deal ; the special work 

 on his little book cultivated the taste for writing and 

 putting things in order, passing proofs, etc., which 

 was part of an education. I had a ready idea of my |i 

 own about selling what we published, and I can tell 

 you there were some assorted works, from Clarke's 

 *' Commentaries on the Bible " in six enormous volumes, , 

 Mosheim's "Ecclesiastical History," and such like, tojj^^ 

 ready reckoners and pocket dictionaries. He mixed 

 up leather goods, a lot of which he used to buy from a 



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