As to my subject being blood and thunder, as some of the litterateurs will describe it, I have only to say that the author of Hard Cash wrote more than a dozen short stories laid upon lines similar to mine. A young man fighting for a place in literature, and for bread and butter at the same time, need not blush at being censured for adopting a literary field in which Charles Reade spent so many years of his life.
By-and-by, when I drive a gilded chariot, and can afford to wait for books with quieter titles and more dramatic worth to bring me their slow earnings, I shall be presumptuous enough to set such a star before my ambition as the masters of English fiction followed.
E. C.
TORONTO, 1st August, 1886.