A Midsummer's Nightmare; or, the Amateur Detective by Florence Marryat

I am an author. I am something worse than that-I am a Press writer. I am worse than that still-I am a Press writer with a large wife and a small family. And I am an Amateur Detective! I don't mean, of course, that I reckon the last item as part of my profession, but my friends always come to me if they are in any difficulty, and set me to do all kinds of queer jobs, from restoring and reconciling a truant husband to his wife, to making the round of the ‘Homes for Lost Dogs' in order to find Lady Softsawder's pet poodle. Even Jones couldn't complete his great work, ‘The Cyclopedia of the Brain,' without asking my assistance (for a consideration, of course) with his fifth section, ‘The Origin of Dreams. ' Jones is full of fire and imagination, but he does not care for plodding, and he knew me of old for a good steady compiler. I agreed with alacrity. ‘The Origin of Dreams' would fill those hungry little mouths of mine for three months at the very least. But how to do it whilst they gaped around me! -how to cover the one table in my solitary sitting-room with valuable works of reference at the risk of their being touched by greasy fingers! -how to wade through volume after volume, placing a mental mark there and a material one here, whilst my offspring either surreptitiously removed the one or irretrievably obliterated remembrance of the other, by attracting my attention to the manner in which they attempted to scalp each other's heads or gouge out each other's eyes! I tried it for a week in vain.

My Press work I had been accustomed to do at office, but this, which was to be based upon the contents of certain ponderous black-lettered tomes which Jones had been collecting for ages past, must be carried on at home, and the noisy, wearisome day gave me no time for reflection, and left me without energy to labour at night. I was about to resign the task in despair-to tell Jones to give it to some more capable or more fortunate labourer in the wide field of speculation-when Fate came to my rescue in the person of the Hon. Captain Rivers, Lord Seaborne's son.