occasionally be picked up at one of Sotheby’s auctions, and if you can get it for less than twenty-five pounds you are lucky—that is if you are a collector and prize such things. It has risen to the dignity of ‘Davos Booklets; Stevensoniana; excessively rare.’ But its original price was sixpence, and its sale was immediate and gratifying. The little boy discovered that there was much more money to be made from one book than a dozen sets of programmes, and that without any black-bearded gentleman either to tweak his nose when errors crept in.

p. ix

Davos Booklets

Stevensoniana

excessively rare

Louis, as the little boy always called his stepfather, with a familiarity that was p. xmuch criticised by strangers, followed this publishing venture with absorbing interest. Then his own ambitions awakened, and one day, with an affected humility that was most embarrassing, he called at the office, and submitted a manuscript called, ‘Not I, and Other Poems,’ which the firm of Osbourne and Co. gladly accepted on the spot. It was an instantaneous hit, selling out an entire edition of fifty copies.

p. x

The publisher was thrilled, and the author was equally jubilant, saying it was the only successful book he had ever written, and jingling his three francs of royalties with an air that made the little boy burst out laughing with delighted pride. In the ensuing enthusiasm another book was planned, and the first poem for it written.

‘If only we could have illustrations,’ said the publisher longingly. But his ‘cuts’ had all been used in ‘Black Canyon, or Life in the Far West.’ Illustrations had to be p. xiput by as a dream impossible of fulfilment. No, not impossible! Louis, who was a man of infinite resourcefulness (he could paint better theatre-scenes than any one could buy), said that he would try to carve some pictures on squares of fretwood. The word fretwood seems as unknown nowadays as the thing itself; it was an extremely thin piece of board with which one was supposed to make works of art with the help of pasted-on patterns, an aggravating little saw, and the patience of Job. . . . Well, Louis cut out a small square of fretwood, and in a deeply-thoughtful manner applied himself to the task. He had only a pocket-knife; real tools came later; but he was impelled by a will to win that carried all before it. After an afternoon of almost suffocating excitement—for the publisher—he completed the engraving that accompanies 

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