WORK IN LONDON
him, that he is not dreamily poetic, but up to date and practical. He makes, perhaps, a chance for himself, but he might have done still better by studying his market, by acquiring a knowledge of the characteristics, the tone and the scope of the journal he has designs on. The editor, on the other hand, merely wants to get at whether X. will appeal to his own particular "crowd."
This tendency of dependence on the tastes of the great crowd is most handily demonstrable in the case of the Press; but it underlies every other industry. I happen to have followed the career of a man who is now still young and a very flourishing cabinet maker. He was the son of a widow in domestic service, Huguenot by descent, merry, dark and handsome whilst a young boy, but not otherwise strikingly intelligent.
The master of his mother got him apprenticed to a working carpenter, and he developed what was practically a passion for fret-sawing. He rather lost his looks and his clothes were always dusted with the little particles of wood that fall away from the teeth of fret-saws. As soon as he was out of his time he set up for himself as a jobbing cabinet maker, in a small Walthamstow shop; he continued to pay serious attention to fretwork. Eventually he evolved what was practically a style: he made small hexagonal coffee tables, of the sort one sees now in the smoking divans of seaside hotels. These things had a kind of pierced screen, Oriental in inspiration, between each pair of legs and
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