ONLY FIFTEEN YEARS AGO.

Otago Witness, Issue 2360, 18 May 1899, Page 56

ONLY FIFTEEN YEARS AGO.

OBSCURE POSITIONS OF MEN WHO ARE FAMOUS TO-DAY. It is not necessary to look back many years co find men whose names are household words to-day, and who have achieved both fame and fortune, occupying obscure positions and giving no indication of the brilliant future that was awaiting them.

Fifteen years ago Dr Conan Doyle was industriously working up a medical practice, with all the attendant hard work and struggle, at Southsea. His pen was as yet untried, and he seemed destined to live and die a countiy doctor. It was four years later when he was tempted to try his 'prentice hand at writing, with what result the world and his bankers know.

When Conan Doyle \£as dispensing physic at Southsea, Mr S. R. Crockett could not even claim the doubtful position of "A Stickit Minister," for it was only in 1886 that he entered the Free Church of Scotland, in which he served an apprenticeship of seven long years before he found that his vocation lay with the pen rather than in the pulpit. At this time, too, only - 15 years ago, "lan I\laclaren" had won popularity as minister of Sefton Park Church, Liverpool; but for a dozen more years his pen was engaged in writing sermons before it turned to the pathos and beauty of " Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush." '

Hall Came, who can now rely on making his own weight in gold out of a single novel, was quite unknown 15 years ago. After years of ill-paid journalism in Liverpool, he came to London to be Dante Rossetti's private secretary, and to find scope and inspiration for the gifts that were in him. The change of environment worked a miracle; for, in 1885, his powerful " Shadow of- a Crime," introduced a new " prophet " to the world of readers. Fifteen years ago Anthony Hope was a scholar of Balliol, and his only ambition was to follow in the footsteps of his uncle, Sir Henry Hawkins, as he then was. It was not until 1890 that he proved himself " a man of mark" in quite another field of labour.

In 1884 Stanley Weyman, the gifted author of so many historical novels, was waiting for briefs in Dr Johnson's Buildings, and did not even attempt to solace his waiting hours by " trying his hand " at fiction, of which he is now such a master

Rudyard Kipling, in the early eighties, was assistant editor of the Indian Pioneer, on many less rupees a month than he now earns pounds a week. He was writing his " Departmental Ditties "' in his few spare moments, and hoped some day, as the height of his ambition, to induce the world to read them in book form. Rider Haggard had already written one book : " Cetywayo and His White Neighbours," and published it at a loss of £50 ; and was on the verge of publishing " Dawn " at a net profit of £10 foi a year's hard work.

Fifteen yeax-s ago Madame Sarah Grand was rambling the world ovet with her soldier-doctor husband, and only vaguely mapping out a novel which the world now knows as '" Ideala." Olive Schreiner was dreaming dreams in the solitude of the veldt, and the " Story of an African Farn» " was gradually asserting its presence in her bi'ain. Mrs Humphry Ward was too busy with domestic cares to recognise the genius that was waking in her, and had been content to write only a simple child's story; and Mrs F. A. Steel was an Indian "mem-sa-hib," with never a thought of pen or' fame.

The same story may be told of scores ol men now world-famous in other fields of effort

The present Viceroy of Indian was reading for his B.A. degree at Oxford in 1884, and was already looking forward to an apprenticeship to politics, which began in the following year as assistant private secretary to Lord Salisbury ; Sir Alfred Milner was a hard-worked sub-editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, with never a dream of the days when he would be " His Excellency," and High Commissioner of South Africa ; and Lord Kitchener was a cavalry major in Egypt, after a spell of obscure, if useful, survey work in Cyprus.