Yielding to his suggestion, I began to write this novel from week to week as it appeared in the paper, and thus found myself involved in the career of a novelist, which had up to that time formed no part of my plan of life.
In my inexperience I worked at a white-heat, completing the book in ten weeks.

Long before these weeks of eager toil were over, it was a question among my friends whether the novel might not write _finis_ to me before I should see the end of it.
The sole purpose I had in view at first was the resuscitation of the dead-and-alive newspaper of which I had ventured to take charge.

One of the firm of publishers thought much less favorably of my story than his partner did.

I was called into the private office and informed with some severity that my characters were too rough to be presentable in a paper so refined as ours.

I confess they did seem somewhat too robust for a sheet so anaemic as _Hearth and Home_ had been in the months just preceding.