But, by dint of hard, unsparing practice, he was able, a week later, to make some sort of a show, and as the lessons went on he even had the delight of finding himself, as Waterford said, `in the running' with his fellow- scholars.

This success was not achieved without considerable determination on the boy's part; but Horace, when he did take a thing up, went through with it.

He gave himself no relaxation for the first week or two.

Every evening after supper he produced his pencil and paper, and his mother produced her book, and for two steady hours the work went on.

Even at the office, in the intervals of work, he reported everything his ears could catch, not excepting the melancholy utterances of Booms and the vulgar conversation of the errand-boy.
One day the sub-editor summoned him to the inner room to give him some instructions as to a letter to be written, when the boy much astonished his chief by taking a note of every word, and producing the letter in a few moments in the identical language in which it had been dictated.
"You know shorthand, then ?" inquired the mild sub-editor.
"Yes, sir, a little." "I did not know of this before." "No, sir; I only began lately.