more about the business than you do, you will go to wood-sawing in
preference to starting a newspaper. You _may_ succeed, but in ten
chances, there are nine on the side of failure."

I shrugged my shoulders and looked incredulous.

"Oh, very well!" said he, "go on and try for yourself. Bought wit is
the best, if you don't pay too dear for it. You are young yet, and a
little experience of this kind may do you no harm in the long run."

"I'm willing to take the risk, for I think I have counted the cost
pretty accurately. As for a failure, I don't mean to know the word.
There is a wide field of enterprise before me, and I intend to
occupy it fully."

The old gentleman shrugged his shoulders in return, but volunteered
no more of his good advice.

A week before the first number of the "Gazette and Reflex" was
ready, I called in my prospectuses, in order to have the thousand or
fifteen hundred names they contained regularly entered in the
subscription-books with which I had provided myself. I had rented an
office and employed a clerk. These were two items of expense that
had not occurred to me when making my first calculation. It was
rather a damper on the ardency of my hopes, to find, that instead of
the large number of subscribers I had fondly expected to receive,
the aggregate from all quarters was but two hundred!

One very active friend, who had guarantied me fifty himself, had but
three names to his list; and another, who said I might set him down