Читать книгу Скорбь сатаны / The sorrows of Satan. Уровень 4 онлайн

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I took both kicks and blows in sullen silence and lived on, – not for the love of life, but simply because I scorned the cowardice of self-destruction. I was young enough not to part with hope too easily. For about six months I got some work on a well-known literary journal. Thirty novels a week were sent to me to ‘criticise’. I was glancing hastily at about eight or ten of them, and writing one column of abuse concerning these thus casually selected. The remainder were useless at all. I found that this mode of action was considered ‘smart,’ and I pleased my editor who paid me the munificent sum of fifteen shillings for my weekly labour.

But on one fatal occasion I changed my tactics and warmly praised a work which my own conscience told me was both original and excellent. The author of it was an old enemy of the proprietor of the journal on which I was employed. My eulogistic review, unfortunately for me, appeared, and I was immediately dismissed.

After this I dragged on in a miserable way, doing some work for the dailies, and living on promises that never became realities, till, in the early January of the bitter winter, I found myself literally penniless and face to face with starvation. Moreover, I was owing a month’s rent for the poor lodging I occupied in a back street not far from the British Museum.