 ill that literary flesh is heir to, racked him
sore.
    Go back to the days when he was an assistant at a bookseller's in Holborn.
Already ambition devoured him, and the genuine love of knowledge goaded his
brain. He allowed himself but three or four hours of sleep; he wrought doggedly
at languages, ancient and modern; he tried his hand at metrical translations; he
planned tragedies. Practically he was living in a past age; his literary ideals
were formed on the study of Boswell.
    The head assistant in the shop went away to pursue a business which had come
into his hands on the death of a relative; it was a small publishing concern,
housed in an alley off the Strand, and Mr Polo (a singular name, to become well
known in the course of time) had his ideas about its possible extension. Among
other instances of activity he started a penny weekly paper, called All Sorts,
and in the pages of this periodical Alfred Yule first appeared as an author.
Before long he became sub-editor of All Sorts, then actual director of the
paper. He said good-bye to the bookseller, and his literary career fairly began.
    Mr Polo used to say that he never knew a man who could work so many
consecutive hours as Alfred Yule. A faithful account of all that the young man
learnt and wrote from 1855 to 1860 - that is, from his twenty-fifth to his
thirtieth year - would have the look of burlesque exaggeration. He had set it
before him to become a celebrated man, and he was not unaware that the
attainment of that end would cost him quite exceptional labour, seeing that
nature had not favoured him with brilliant parts. No matter; his name should be
spoken among men - unless he killed himself in the struggle for success.
    In the meantime he married. Living in a garret, and supplying himself with
the materials of his scanty meals, he was in the habit of making purchases at a
little chandler's shop, where he was waited upon by a young girl of no beauty,
but, as it seemed to him, of amiable disposition. One holiday he met this girl
as she was walking with a younger sister in the streets; he made her nearer
acquaintance, and before long she consented to be his wife and share his garret.
His brothers, John and Edmund, cried out that he had made an unpardonable fool
of himself in marrying so much beneath him; that he might well have waited until
his income improved. This was all very well, but they might just as reasonably
