So came to an untimely end my second serious attempt at writing a book; for the stories that I had written in emulation of Josephine H---- were only short ones, and were mostly unfinished.
I wasted a terrible deal of paper between my second try and my seventeenth birthday, and I believe that I was, at that time, one of the most hopeless trials of my father's life. He many times offered to provide me with as much cheap paper as I liked to have; but cheap paper did not satisfy my artistic soul, for I always liked the best of everything. Good paper was my weakness--as it was his--and I used it, or wasted it, which you will, with just the same lavish hand as I had done aforetime.
When I was seventeen, I did a skit on a little book called 'How to Live on Sixpence a Day.' It was my first soldier story--excepting the original three soldiers and a pig--and introduced the 'sixpence a day' pamphlet into a smart cavalry regiment, whose officers were in various degrees of debt and difficulty, and every man was a barefaced portrait, without the smallest attempt at concealment of his identity. Eventually this sketch was printed in a York paper, and the honour of seeing myself in print was considered enough reward for me. I, on the contrary, had no such pure love of fame. I had done what I considered a very smart sketch, and I thought it well worth payment of some kind, which it certainly was.
After this, I spent a year abroad, improving my mind--and I think, on the whole, it will be best to draw a veil over that portion of my literary history, for I went out to dinner on every possible occasion, and had a good time generally. Stay--did I not say my literary history? Well, that year had a good deal to do with my literary history, for I wrote stories most of the time, during a large part of my working hours and during the whole of my spare time, when I did not happen to be going out to dinner. And when I came home, I worked on just the same until, towards the end of '75, I drew blood for the first time. Oh, the joy of that first bit of money--my first earnings! And it was but a bit, a mere scrap. To be explicit, it amounted to ten shillings. I went and bought a watch on the strength of it--not a very costly affair; a matter of two pounds ten and an old silver turnip that I had by me. It was wonderful how that one half-sovereign opened up my ideas. I looked into the future as far as eye could see, and I saw myself earning an income--for at that time of day I had acquired no artistic feelings at all, and I genuinely wanted to make name and fame and money--I saw myself a young woman who could make a couple of hundred pounds from one novel, and I gloried in the prospect.