Strachey, John St. Loe, 1860-1927 / 2008-05-30 00:00:00


I honestly think that what I liked best in the whole business was the
element of adventure. There was something thrilling and, so, intensely
delightful to me in the thought, that I had walked down to Wellington
Street, like a character in a novel, prepared for a setback, only to
find that Fate was there, "hid in an auger-hole," ready to rush and
seize me. Somehow or other I felt, though I would not admit it even to
myself, that the incident had been written in the Book of Destiny, and
that it was one which was going to affect my whole life. Of course,
being, like other young men, a creature governed wholly by reason and
good sense, I scouted the notion of a destined day as sentimental and
ridiculous. Still, the facts were "as stated," and could not be
altogether denied.
Looking back at the lucky accident which brought the right book, the
right reviewer, and the properly-tuned editors together, I am bound to
say that I think that the editors were right and that I had produced
good copy. At any rate, their view being what it was, I have no sort of
doubt that they were quite right to express it as plainly and as
generously as they did to me. To have followed the conventional rule of
not puffing up a young man with praise and to have guarded their true
opinion as a kind of guilty secret would have been distinctly unfair to
me, nay, prejudicial.
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