consideration--why, it meant a couple of meals. (I once _found_ sixpence
in the street, and had an exultation which is vivid in me at this
moment.) The front cellar was stone-floored; its furniture was a table,
a chair, a wash-stand, and a bed; the window, which of course had never
been cleaned since it was put in, received light through a flat grating
in the alley above. Here I lived; here _I wrote_. Yes, "literary work"
was done at that filthy deal table, on which, by the bye, lay my Homer,
my Shakespeare, and the few other books I then possessed. At night, as I
lay in bed, I used to hear the tramp, tramp of a _posse_ of policemen who
passed along the alley on their way to relieve guard; their heavy feet
sometimes sounded on the grating above my window.

I recall a tragi-comical incident of life at the British Museum. Once,
on going down into the lavatory to wash my hands, I became aware of a
notice newly set up above the row of basins. It ran somehow thus:
"Readers are requested to bear in mind that these basins are to be used
only for casual ablutions." Oh, the significance of that inscription!
Had I not myself, more than once, been glad to use this soap and water
more largely than the sense of the authorities contemplated? And there
were poor fellows working under the great dome whose need, in this
respect, was greater than mine. I laughed heartily at the notice, but it
meant so much.

Some of my abodes I have utterly forgotten; for one reason or another, I
was always moving--an easy matter when all my possessions lay in one
small trunk. Sometimes the people of the house were intolerable. In
those days I was not fastidious, and I seldom had any but the slightest
intercourse with those who dwelt under the same roof, yet it happened now
and then that I was driven away by human proximity which passed my
endurance. In other cases I had to flee from pestilential conditions.