message at Christmas, an intimation of a birth, a funeral card, are the
solitary relics and mementoes of many a city friendship not extinct,
but utterly suspended.

I dwell on these obvious characteristics of London life, because in
course of time they assumed for me almost terrifying dimensions. After
ten years of arduous toil I found myself at thirty-five lonely,
friendless, and imprisoned in a groove of iron, whose long curves swept
on inevitably to that grim terminus where all men arrive at last.
Sometimes I chided myself for my discontent; and certainly there were
many who might have envied me. I occupied a fairly comfortable house
in a decayed terrace where each house was exactly like its neighbour,
and had I told any one that the mere aspect of this grey terrace
oppressed me by its featureless monotony, I should have been laughed at
for my pains. I believe that I was trusted by my employers, and if a
mere automatic diligence can be accounted a virtue, I merited their
trust. In course of time my income would have been increased, though
never to that degree which means competence or freedom. To this common
object of ambition I had indeed long ago become indifferent. What can
a few extra pounds a year bring to a man who finds himself bound to the
same tasks, and those tasks distasteful? I was married and had two
children; and the most distressing thought of all was that I saw my
children predestined to the same fate. I saw them growing up in
complete destitution of those country sights and sounds which had made
my own youth delightful; acquiring the superficial sharpness of the
city child and his slang; suffering at times by the anaemia and
listlessness bred of vitiated air; high-strung and sensitive as those
must needs be whose nerves are in perpetual agitation; and when, in
chance excursions to the country, I compared my children with the
children of cottagers and ploughmen, I felt that I had wronged them, I