CAUSES OF SUCCESS 



13 



Hoaxes, I have observed, are not what they used to 

 be when I took an active part in them; and, more- 

 over, the proximity of the ist of April made me 

 more than ordinarily suspicious. Nevertheless, upon 

 a second inspection, I was so impressed by a look and 

 tone of genuine reality that I wrote ultimately to 

 the address indicated, asking somewhat sarcastically 

 and incredulously, as being a shrewd, superior person 

 not to be sold at any figure, what sorts of Roses were 

 so kind as to bloom during the month of April at 

 Nottingham, and nowhere else. By return of post I 

 was informed, with much more courtesy than I had 

 any claim to, that the Roses in question were grown 

 under glass — where and how^ the growers would be 

 delighted to show me, if I would oblige them by my 

 company. 



On Easter Monday, in due course, upon a raw 

 and gusty day, when spring and winter, sleet and 

 sunshine, were fighting round after round, like Spring 

 and Langan,^ for victory, — winter now retreating, 

 sobbing and puffing, to his corner, and now coming 

 on in force, black with rage, resistless, hitting out 

 hard and straight, until the sun's eye had a sickly 



^ I witnessed their great fight for the championship, in a show of 

 mechanical figures at Newark, at that early period of childhood when 

 such things seem to us realities ; and I was astounded at the courage 

 and condition of Langan, who was knocked into the air about four 

 feet from the ground at the end of every round, and invariably came 

 down on his head ! 



