Page:The Story of the House of Cassell (book).djvu/168

 enough for the job, or, on the contrary, wore a paternal air of gravity, the undertaking was offered to me. Of course, I accepted it. I would have cheerfully edited The Times at that moment, and dismissed the 'Encyclopædia Britannica' with a laugh. We set to work, and I called to my aid all the talent that I knew. Mr. D. H. Parry was the first, and then the late Mr. Henty, and others who were acquainted with this kind of work. Chums eventually appeared (1892) and sold some hundred odd thousands of its first copy. I thought then, and I think now, that the paper would have had a gayer start if my own ideas had been more generally accepted, and its two-column Chums format had been changed for one of three columns, with the corresponding opportunities for illustration. However, the paper jogged on very well, and therein I wrote 'The Iron Pirate' in the hope of stimulating the activities of a flagging public. This it certainly did, and, incidentally, permitted me to abandon editorship for the time being and devote myself exclusively to fiction.

"Of course I saw much of Sir Wemyss Reid. The meetings with him were invariably amusing. He would listen to the scheme I had to propound and then proceed to tell me a story of Bismarck or the Prime Minister. Once when I went down to discuss the enlargement of Chums he told me an amusing story of a Cabinet Minister of the day who, from motives of curiosity, thought he would like a penny ride upon a bus. He did so, and was fortunate enough to obtain a seat by the driver's side. They discussed many things, and as they went down Park Lane, the Cabinet Minister pointed to his own house and asked the bus driver if he knew who lived there: 'Why, yes,' he replied, 'the most immoral family in London, male and female.' Sir Wemyss, indeed, always had an anecdote, and it was a pleasure to introduce distinguished visitors to him because of those rare conversational gifts in which he had few equals then in London."

When Mr. Pemberton vacated the editorial chair of