becoming so prosperous that he accumulated upwards of five pounds. But let it never be said that he spurned the humble mainstay of his beginnings. He printed the weekly programmes as usual, and bore the exactions of the black-bearded gentleman with fortitude. When he made such a trifling mistake, for instance, as ‘The Harp that Once Through Tara’s Hells,’ he dutifully climbed the hill to his freezing room, and ran off a whole fresh set. Two francs fifty was two francs fifty. p. xvEvery business man appreciates the comfort of a small regular order which can be counted on like the clock.

p. xv

But one day there was no black-bearded gentleman. ‘Oh, he was dead. Had had a hemorrhage three days before and had died.’ I don’t know whether the little boy mourned for him particularly, but it was a shock to lose that two francs fifty centimes. The little boy was worried until he found a lady who had substituted herself for the gentleman with the black beard. She was a very kind lady; you could print anything for that lady, and ‘get away with it’ as Americans say. But she was frolicsome and lacked poise; she was vague about appointments, and had a disheartening way of saying: ‘Oh, bother,’ when the little boy appeared; she would insist on kissing him amid circumstances of the most odious publicity; was so abased a creature besides, that she often marred the programmes by making pen-and-ink corrections. In p. xvicontrast, the little boy looked back on the black-bearded gentleman almost with regret.

p. xvi

Two winters were thus occupied, with incidental education that seemed far less important. The Prussian officer had fortunately died, releasing the little boy from any further study of German. All that he retains of it to-day is the taste of that pocket-knife, and of the Prussian officer’s thumb. Then he was sent to boarding-school in England, or to be precise to a tutor who had half a dozen resident pupils. Time passed; publishing became a memory. Then a long summer holiday found the little boy, now much grown and matured, reunited with his family in Kingussie. The printing-press was there, and business was resumed with enthusiasm. The stepfather, who had made much more progress with engraving than the boy had with Latin, had the blocks and poems all ready for ‘The Graver and the Pen.’

But the printing-press broke down; and p. xviiafter an interval of despair and unavailing attempts to repair it, an amiable old man was found who had a press of his own behind a microscopic general shop. Here ‘The Graver and the Pen’ was 

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