SIXTEEN TO TWENTY. 61 



in this kind of work between the years 1865 

 and 1877. 



But he did other things as well, showing 

 that he never intended to sit down in ignoble 

 obscurity as the reporter of a country news- 

 paper. 



I have before me a little book called " Ee- 

 porting, Editing, and Authorship/' published 

 without date at Swindon, and by John Snow 

 and Co., Ivy Lane, London. I think it ap- 

 peared in the year 1872, when he was in his 

 twenty-fourth year. It is, however, the work 

 of a very young man ; the kind of work at 

 which you must not laugh, although it amuses 

 you, because it is so very much in earnest, and 

 at the same time so very elementary. You 

 see before you in these pages the ideal re- 

 porter Jefferies was always zealous to do 

 everything that he had to do as well as it 

 could be done. It is divided into three 

 chapters, but the latter two are vague and 

 tentative, compared with the first. The little 

 book should have been called, " He would be 

 an Author." 



" Let the aspirant," he says, " begin with 



