My temporal troubles ended as my more serious difficulties disappeared—all being in due accordance with the old adage which tells us that “it never rains but it pours.”
One morning, soon after hearing from England, as I was conning over the advertisement columns of the New York Herald, I chanced on a notice which immediately caught my eye. An “editor” was wanted, without delay, at the office of one of the other leading-journals of the city, where applications were requested from all desirous of taking the “situation vacant.” Who could this have reference to, but me?
I thought so, at all events, and “exploited” the supposition.
I did not allow the grass to grow under my feet, I can assure you.
I hurried off instanter to the address mentioned; and, although newspaper men of the New World, unlike ours, are uncommonly early birds, getting up matutinally betimes so as to catch the typical worm—in which respect they resemble the entire business population of Transatlantica—I found, on my arrival, that I was the first candidate who had appeared on the scene.
It was a good omen, for your “live Yankee” likes “smartness;” consequently, I was sanguine of success.
You may, peradventure, be “surprised to hear” of my thinking myself fit for such a post, having had such a slight acquaintance with literature at home?
That did not dissuade me, however, in the least.
I have so great a confidence in myself, that I would really take the command of the Channel fleet to-morrow if it were offered to me—as Earl Russell proposed to do, when he was simple “Lord John;” and, as a civilian First Lord of the Admirality has since done, although he possessed so little nautical knowledge that he might not have been able to tell you the difference between a cathead and a capstan bar, or, how to distinguish a “dinghy” from the “second cutter.” I suppose he thought, like Mr Toots, that, “it didn’t matter!”
Conceit, you say?