In the career of the most unliterary of writers, in the sense that literary ambition had never entered the world of his imagination, the coming into existence of the first book is quite an inexplicable¹ event. In my own case I cannot trace it back to any mental or psychological cause which one could point out and hold to. The greatest of my gifts being a consummate² capacity for doing nothing, I cannot even point to boredom³ as a rational stimulus⁴ for taking up a pen. The pen, at any rate, was there, and there is nothing wonderful in that. Everybody keeps a pen (the cold steel of our days) in his rooms, in this enlightened age of penny stamps and halfpenny post-cards. In fact, this was the epoch⁵ when by means of postcard and pen Mr. Gladstone had made the reputation of a novel or two. And I, too, had a pen rolling about somewhere — the seldom-used, the reluctantly taken-up pen of a sailor ashore⁶, the pen rugged⁷ with the dried ink of abandoned attempts, of answers delayed longer than decency⁸ permitted, of letters begun with infinite reluctance⁹, and put off suddenly till next day — till next week, as like as not! The neglected, uncared-for pen, flung away at the slightest provocation¹⁰, and under the stress of dire¹² necessity hunted for without enthusiasm, in a perfunctory, grumpy worry, in the “Where the devil IS the beastly thing gone to?” ungracious spirit. Where, indeed! It might have been

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