I don't know what it is. To be born poor is probably the next best
thing. The greatest glory that has ever come to me was to be
swallowed up in London, not knowing a soul, with no means of
subsistence, and the fun of working till the stars went out.
To have known any one would have spoilt it. I did not even quite
know the language. I rang for my boots, and they thought I said
a glass of water, so I drank the water and worked on. There was
no food in the cupboard, so I did not need to waste time in eating.
The pangs and agonies when no proof came. How courteously tolerant
was I of the postman without a proof for us; how M'Connachie,
on the other hand, wanted to punch his head. The magic days when
our article appeared in an evening paper. The promptitude with
which I counted the lines to see how much we should get for it.
Then M'Connachie's superb air of dropping it into the gutter.
Oh, to be a free lance of journalism again--that darling jade!
Those were days. Too good to last. Let us be grave. Here comes
a Rector.

But now, on reflection, a dreadful sinking assails me, that this was
not really work. The artistic callings--you remember how Stevenson
thumped them--are merely doing what you are clamorous to be at;
it is not real work unless you would rather be doing something else.
My so-called labours were just M'Connachie running away with me again.
Still, I have sometimes worked; for instance, I feel that I am
working at this moment. And the big guns are in the same plight
as the little ones. Carlyle, the king of all rectors, has always
been accepted as the arch-apostle of toil, and has registered his
many woes. But it will not do. Despite sickness, poortith, want
and all, he was grinding all his life at the one job he revelled in.
An extraordinarily happy man, though there is no direct proof that