Four-In-Hand Novelists

The following is a word-puzzle. It narrates the adventures of a four-in-hand novelist while trying to lose his reputation. Competitors do not require to be told that a four-in-hand novelist is a writer of fiction who keeps four serial tales running abreast in the magazines. The names of specimen four-in-hand novelists will recur readily to every one. The puzzle is to discover who this particular novelist is; the description, as will be observed, answering to quite a number of them.

A few years ago, if any one in Fleet street had said that the day would come when I would devote my time to trying to lose my reputation, I would have smiled incredulously. That was before I had a reputation. To be as statistical as time will allow -- for before I go to bed I have seven and a half yards of fiction to write -- it took me fifteen years' hard work to acquire a reputation. For two years after that I worked as diligently to retain it, not being quite certain whether it was really there, and for the last five years I have done my best to get rid of it. Mr. R. L. Stevenson has a story of a dynamiter who tried in vain to leave an infernal machine anywhere. It was always returned to him as soon as he dropped it, or just as he was making off. My reputation is as difficult to lose. I have not given up the attempt yet, but I am already of opinion that it is even harder to lose a reputation in letters than to make one. My colleagues will bear me out in this.