make a fortune by selling pin-cushions and pepper-boxes to the natives of that remote region, whom he must apparently have supposed to be in the state of savages ready to barter valuables for beads. The Yankee was not quite so innocent. She, of course, lost all her money, but came home to describe the 'domestic manners' of her customers with a sharpness which for a time set England and America by the ears. She discovered that she had a pure vein of rather vulgar satire, and worked it to such effect that, though she was over fifty when she began to write, she published one hundred and fourteen volumes before her death. She managed to keep her family afloat, and Trollope, in his darkest days, saw that one possible road to success lay in following her footsteps. He perceived that he had not genius to be a poet, nor the erudition necessary for a historian. But he had a certain taste for reading. He had, even in his boyhood, indulged during the intervals of bullying in occasional rambles through such literature as came in his way, and had decided that Pride and Prejudice was the best novel in the language. At the Post Office he had learnt French and brushed up his Latin sufficiently to enjoy Horace. Then he had
