told me long afterwards that he brought the book to me because he knew of my devotion to George Borrow.

Mr. Jeffery Farnol is an Englishman, and his best-known book, 

, is redolent of the atmosphere of his native country. Nevertheless it was written in the United States of America, and perhaps it has enjoyed its greatest popularity there. Yet three American publishers refused the book, and so Mr. Farnol is one of a long list of authors who have worked their way through much tribulation to success. I confess that such episodes in the romance of publishing attract me mightily. I rather like to hear of the short-sighted publisher who rejects an author's book and finds out, when too late, that he has lost money and reputation by his lack of prescience. And I like also to hear the story of the loyal friend who, reading a manuscript, stands by his judgment and introduces that friend to a publisher, with the happiest results for both. That is Mr. Farnol's personal romance. The friend in question was Mr. Shirley Byron Jevons, to whom the manuscript was sent from America. Mr. Jevons, after an enthusiastic perusal, carried it to Mr. Fred J. Rymer, a director of Sampson Low, Marston & Co., the publishers. The book was published, and a sale throughout the English-speaking world of 600,000 was the result. I hope I may be forgiven for recalling that Mr. Rymer brought the manuscript to me. Well do I remember his enthusiasm and my lack of it. I have read too many manuscripts in my life as an editor ever to wish to usurp the duties of a publisher or of a publisher's literary adviser. I should hate the life. Think of that publisher and what he would feel about you if perchance you had persuaded him to refuse this or that "best-seller," as our American friends call the very popular book. Imagine the feelings of the publishers whose readers advised them to refuse Charlotte Brontë's 

 without at the same time persuading the author to write a 

. But Mr. Rymer was an old acquaintance and I promised to read his new-found story. I added the remark, I remember, that I was rather used to publishers counting their geese as swans. Mr. Rymer told me long afterwards that he brought the book to me because he knew of my devotion to George Borrow.

In any case I read The Broad Highway with avidity, and recognised at once--as who would not have done?--that here was a striking addition to picaresque romances, that the author had not read Don Quixote, Gil Blas, and the best stories by Defoe and Fielding for nothing, nor had he 

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