Page:The Story of the House of Cassell (book).djvu/107

 School, my old school, of an evening—I might get something to do in London. Mentioning the matter to my father's old friend, Thomas Wilson Reid, the manager of the Sportsman, which was then issued from Boy Court, Ludgate Hill, I received from him an introduction to Mr. John Hamer, Messrs. Cassell, Petter and Galpin's publisher, who passed me on to Mr. Petter. As luck would have it, there was a vacancy—caused by the transference of my late friend, Daniel Gorrie, the well-known Orcadian, from the editorial staff to the charge of the Country News Department—and Mr. Petter, after subjecting me to a stiff examination, intimated that I might stay with the firm for a fortnight 'to see how I liked it, and how the principals liked me.'

"The period of probation ended, I was duly enrolled a member of the editorial staff. I began at the bottom of the ladder and climbed to the top. And here, may I be allowed to say, in reply to the favourite taunt that Scotsmen never 'gang back,' that I can produce documentary evidence that one Scot, at any rate, came to London with a bona-fide intention to go back to his native land, for my return ticket now hangs in a frame on my walls!

"A brief summary, curtailed and condensed as it is, will suffice to show what an excellent training-ground an editorial berth at Cassell's afforded, though, thank God, none of us came out either prigs or Admirable Crichtons. Each editor, excepting those in charge of the permanent magazines, was entrusted, subject to the direction of the chief, with the care of two or three of the serials, and was also required to see a reasonable quota of volumes through the press, to read and report upon MSS. submitted on approval, and to 'fill up' by revising re-issues of serials, of which there was always a good number on hand. The editing of a new serial was, naturally, his most onerous work. In such cases he had to prepare the 'copy' for the printers and select the illustrations.

"Before the Art Department was founded all the arrangements for drawings and engravings went through