wandered to the sea; but so impossible was the gratification of such
desire that it never greatly troubled me. At times, indeed, I seem all
but to have forgotten that people went away for holiday. In those poor
parts of the town where I dwelt, season made no perceptible difference;
there were no luggage-laden cabs to remind me of joyous journeys; the
folk about me went daily to their toil as usual, and so did I. I
remember afternoons of languor, when books were a weariness, and no
thought could be squeezed out of the drowsy brain; then would I betake
myself to one of the parks, and find refreshment without any enjoyable
sense of change. Heavens, how I laboured in those days! And how far I
was from thinking of myself as a subject for compassion! That came
later, when my health had begun to suffer from excess of toil, from bad
air, bad food and many miseries; then awoke the maddening desire for
countryside and sea-beach--and for other things yet more remote. But in
the years when I toiled hardest and underwent what now appear to me
hideous privations, of a truth I could not be said to suffer at all. I
did not suffer, for I had no sense of weakness. My health was proof
against everything, and my energies defied all malice of circumstance.
With however little encouragement, I had infinite hope. Sound sleep
(often in places I now dread to think of) sent me fresh to the battle
each morning, my breakfast, sometimes, no more than a slice of bread and
a cup of water. As human happiness goes, I am not sure that I was not
then happy.

Most men who go through a hard time in their youth are supported by
companionship. London has no _pays latin_, but hungry beginners in
literature have generally their suitable comrades, garreteers in the
Tottenham Court Road district, or in unredeemed Chelsea; they make their
little _vie de Boheme_, and are consciously proud of it. Of my position,
the peculiarity was that I never belonged to any cluster; I shrank from