that an article on flagstone artists could be made interesting. 'But always be sure of your facts,' Simms said. 'Write your articles over again and again, avoid fine writing as much as dishonest writing, and never spoil a leaderette by drawing it out into a leader. By and by you may be able to choose the kind of subject that interests yourself, but at present put your best work into what experienced editors believe interests the general public.'
Rob found these suggestions valuable, and often thought, as he passed Simms's door, of going in to thank him, but he had an uncomfortable feeling that Simms did not want him. Of course Rob was wrong. Simms had feared at first to saddle himself with a man who might prove incapable, and besides, he generally liked those persons best whom he saw least frequently.
For the great part of the spring Simms was out of town; but one day after his return he met Rob on the stair, and took him into his chambers. The sitting-room had been originally furnished with newspaper articles; Simms, in his younger days, when he wanted a new chair or an etching having written an article to pay for it, and then pasted the article on the back. He had paid a series on wild birds for his piano, and at one time leaderettes had even been found in the inside of his hats. Odd books and magazines lay about his table, but they would not in all have filled a library shelf; and there were no newspapers visible. The blank wall opposite the fireplace showed in dust that a large picture had recently hung there. It was an oil-painting which a month earlier had given way in the cord and fallen behind the piano, where Simms was letting it lie.
'I wonder,' said Rob, who had heard from many quarters of Simms's reputation, 'that you are content to put your best work into newspapers.'
'Ah,' answered Simms, 'I was ambitious once, but, as I told you, the grand book was a failure. Nowadays I gratify myself with the reflection that I am not stupid enough ever to be a great man.'
'I wish you would begin something really big,' said Rob earnestly.
'I feel safer,' replied Simms, 'finishing something really little.'
He turned the talk to Rob's affairs as if his own wearied him, and, after hesitating, offered to 'place' a political article by Rob with the editor of the Morning Wire.
'I don't say he'll use it, though,' he added.
This was so much the work Rob hungered for that he could have run upstairs and begun it at once.
'Why, you surely don't work on Saturday nights?' said his host, who was putting on an overcoat.
'Yes,' said Rob, 'there is nothing else to do. I know no one well enough to go to him. Of course I do nothing on the Sab—I mean on Sundays.'
'No? Then how do you pass your Sundays?'
'I go to church, and take a long walk, or read.'
'And you never break this principle—when a capital idea for an article strikes you on Sunday evening, for instance?'
'Well,' said Rob, 'when that happens I wait until twelve o'clock strikes, and then begin.'
Perceiving nothing curious in this, Rob did not look up to see Simms's mouth twitching.
'On those occasions,' asked Simms, 'when you are waiting for twelve o'clock, does the evening not seem to pass very slowly?'
Then Rob blushed.
'At all events, come with me to-night,' said Simms, 'to my club. I am going now to the Wigwam, and we may meet men there worth your knowing.'
The Wigwam is one of the best known literary clubs in London, and as they rattled to it in a hansom, the driver of which was the broken son of a peer, Rob remarked that its fame had even travelled to his saw-mill.
'It has such a name,' said Simms in reply, 'that I feel sorry for any one who is taken to it for the first time. The best way to admire the Wigwam is not to go to it.'
'I always thought it was considered the pleasantest club in London,' Rob said.
'So it is,' said Simms, who was a member of half a dozen; 'most of the others are only meant for sitting in on padded chairs and calling out "sh-sh" when any other body speaks.'
At the Wigwam there is a special dinner every Saturday evening, but it was over before Simms and Rob arrived, and the members were crowding into the room where great poets have sat beating time with churchwardens, while great artists or coming Cabinet ministers sang songs that were not of the drawing-room. A popular novelist, on whom Rob gazed with a veneration that did not spread to his companion's face, was in the chair when they entered, and the room was full of literary men, actors, and artists, of whom, though many were noted, many were also needy. Here was an actor who had separated from his wife because her notices were better than his; and another gentleman of the same profession took Rob aside to say that he was the greatest tragedian on earth if he could only get a chance. Rob did not know what to reply when the eminent cartoonist sitting next him, whom he had looked up to for half a dozen years, told him, by way of opening a conversation, that he had just pawned his watch. They seemed so pleased with poverty that they made as much of a little of it as they could, and the wisest conclusion Rob came to that night was not to take them too seriously. It was, however, a novel world to find oneself in all of a sudden, one in which everybody was a wit at his own expense. Even Simms, who always upheld the Press when any outsider ran it down, sang with applause some verses whose point lay in their being directed against himself. They began—
When clever pressmen write this way,
'As Mr. J. A. Froude would say,'
Is it because they think he would,
And have they read a line of Froude?
Or is it only that they fear
The comment they have made is queer,
And that they either must erase it,
Or say it's Mr. Froude who says it?
Every one abandoned himself to the humour of the evening, and as song followed song, or was wedged between entertainments of other kinds, the room filled with smoke until it resembled London in a fog.
By and by a sallow-faced man mounted a table to show the company how to perform a remarkable trick with three hats. He got his hats from the company, and having looked at them thoughtfully for some minutes, said that he had forgotten the way.
'That,' said Simms, mentioning a well-known journalist, 'is K——. He can never work unless his pockets are empty, and he would not be looking so doleful at present if he was not pretty well off. He goes from room to room in the house he lodges in, according to the state of his finances, and when you call on him you have to ask at the door which floor he is on to-day. One week you find him in the drawing-room, the next in the garret.'
A stouter and brighter man followed the hat entertainment with a song, which he said was considered by some of his friends a recitation.
'There was a time,' said Simms, who was held a terrible person by those who took him literally, 'when that was the saddest man I knew. He was so sad that the doctors feared he would die of it. It all came of his writing for Punch.'
'How did they treat him?' Rob asked.
'Oh, they quite gave him up, and he was wasting away visibly, when a second-rate provincial journal appointed him its London correspondent, and saved his life.'
'Then
