My First Book: / the experiences of Walter Besant, James Payn, W. Clark Russell, Grant Allen, Hall Caine, George R. Sims, Rudyard Kipling, A. Conan Doyle, M.E. Braddon, F.W. Robinson, H. Rider Haggard, R.M. Ballantyne, I. Zangwill, Morley Roberts, David Christie Murray, Marie Corelli, Jerome K. Jerome, John Strange Winter, Bret Harte, "Q.", Robert Buchanan, Robert Louis Stevenson, with an introduction by Jerome K. Jerome.

PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE LONDON

THE EXPERIENCES OF
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JEROME K. JEROME AND 185 ILLUSTRATIONS London CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY 1894
'PLEASE, sir,' he said, 'could you tell me the right time?'
'Twenty minutes to eight,' I replied, looking at my watch.
'Oh,' he remarked. Then added for my information after a pause: 'I haven't got to be in till half-past eight.'
After that we fell back into our former silence, and sat watching the murky twilight, he at his end of the park seat, I at mine.
'And do you live far away?' I asked, lest, he having miscalculated, the short legs might be hard put to it.
'Oh no, only over there,' he answered, indicating with a sweep of his arm the northern half of London where it lay darkening behind the chimney-fringed horizon; 'I often come and sit here.'
It seemed an odd pastime for so very small a citizen. 'And what makes you like to come and sit here?' I said.