exhilarate him.

All this time he was of course living in absolute solitude. Poverty is the
great secluder--unless one belongs to the rank which is born to it; a
sensitive man who no longer finds himself on equal terms with his natural
associates, shrinks into loneliness, and learns with some surprise how very
willing people are to forget his existence. London is a wilderness
abounding in anchorites--voluntary or constrained. As he wandered about the
streets and parks, or killed time in museums and galleries (where nothing
had to be paid), Mr. Tymperley often recognised brethren in seclusion; he
understood the furtive glance which met his own, he read the peaked visage,
marked with understanding sympathy the shabby-genteel apparel. No
interchange of confidences between these lurking mortals; they would like
to speak, but pride holds them aloof; each goes on his silent and
unfriended way, until, by good luck, he finds himself in hospital or
workhouse, when at length the tongue is loosed, and the sore heart pours
forth its reproach of the world.

Strange knowledge comes to a man in this position. He learns wondrous
economies, and will feel a sort of pride in his ultimate discovery of how
little money is needed to support life. In his old days Mr. Tymperley would
have laid it down as an axiom that 'one' cannot live on less than
such-and-such an income; he found that 'a man' can live on a few coppers a
day. He became aware of the prices of things to eat, and was taught the
relative virtues of nutriment. Perforce a vegetarian, he found that a
vegetable diet was good for his health, and delivered to himself many a
scornful speech on the habits of the carnivorous multitude. He of necessity
abjured alcohols, and straightway longed to utter his testimony on a
teetotal platform. These were his satisfactions. They compensate
astonishingly for the loss of many kinds of self-esteem.