and a small capital to follow when I should have found some safe and profitable chance of starting life. With me came--in the order of their importance--a fiddle, the "Bhagavad Gita," Shelley, "Sartor Resartus," Berkeley's "Dialogues," Patanjali's "Yoga Aphorisms," de Quincey's "Confessions," and--a unique ignorance of life.... I served my first literary apprenticeship on the Methodist Magazine, a monthly periodical published in Toronto, and before that licked stamps in the back office of the Temperance and General Life Assurance Company, at nothing a week, but with the idea of learning the business, so that later I might bring out some English insurance company to Canada.
The first taught me that, just as I had no ambition to write, so, likewise, I possessed no talent; the second merely made articulate the dislike I felt for anything to do with Business. It was the three months in the insurance office that caused me to accept eagerly the job on the Methodist Magazine at four dollars a week, and the reaction helped to make the work congenial if not stimulating.
The allowance of ten dollars a week was difficult to live on, and I had been looking everywhere for employment. It was through a daughter of Sir Thomas Galt, a friend of my father's on our previous trip to Canada, that I obtained this job--sixteen shillings a week, hours ten to four.
Dr. Withrow, editor of the leading Methodist magazine, and of various Christian Endeavour periodicals for children and young people, was a pleasant old gentleman, who went about in a frock coat and slippers, had a real sense of humour and a nice wife and daughter. His editorial den was in his own little house, and my duties were to write an article every month for the magazine, which was illustrated, and also to write a few descriptive lines of letterpress to accompany the full-page illustrations for the numerous Christian Endeavour and Methodist periodicals for young people and children. He
taught me the typewriter, and with my shorthand I took
