Three months in London and Johnson succeeded in getting a place on the
editorial staff of "The Gentleman's Magazine." Prosperity smiled, not
exactly a broad grin; but the expression was something better than a
stony, forbidding stare.

He made haste to go back to Lichfield after his "Letty," which name, by
the way, is an improvement on Betty, Betsy or Tetsy--being baby-talk for
Elizabeth.

They took modest lodgings in a third floor back, off Fleet Street, and
Johnson began that life of struggle against debt, ridicule and unkind
condition that was to continue for forty-seven years; never out of debt,
never free from attacks of enemies; a life of wordy warfare and inky
broadsides against cant, affectation and untruth--with the weapons of his
dialectics always kept well burnished by constant use; hated and loved;
jeered and praised; feared and idolized.

Coming out of his burrow one dark night, he encountered an old
beggar-woman who importuned him for alms. He was brushing past her, when
one of her exclamations caught his ear.

"Sir," said the woman, "I am an old struggler!"

"Madam," replied Johnson, "so am I!" And he gave her his last sixpence.

But life in London was cheap in those days--it is now if you know how to
do it, or else have to. Johnson used to maintain that for thirty pounds a
year one could live like a gentleman, and as proof would quote an
imaginary acquaintance who argued that ten pounds a year for clothes would