But the spirit of lawlessness was strong within me in those days, so
that I hearkened to the voice of Skegson, the tempter, and he lured
my feet from the paths that led to virtue and Sadler's Wells, and we
wandered into the broad and crowded ways that branch off from the
Angel towards Merry Islington.

Skegson insisted that we should do the thing in style, so we stopped
at a shop near the Agricultural Hall and purchased some big cigars.
A huge card in the window claimed for these that they were "the most
satisfactory twopenny smokes in London." I smoked two of them during
the evening, and never felt more satisfied--using the word in its
true sense, as implying that a person has had enough of a thing, and
does not desire any more of it, just then--in all my life. Where we
went, and what we saw, my memory is not very clear upon. We sat at a
little marble table. I know it was marble because it was so hard,
and cool to the head. From out of the smoky mist a ponderous
creature of strange, undefined shape floated heavily towards us, and
deposited a squat tumbler in front of me containing a pale yellowish
liquor, which subsequent investigation has led me to believe must
have been Scotch whisky. It seemed to me then the most nauseous
stuff I had ever swallowed. It is curious to look back and notice
how one's tastes change.

I reached home very late and very sick. That was my first
dissipation, and, as a lesson, it has been of more practical use to
me than all the good books and sermons in the world could have been.
I can remember to this day standing in the middle of the room in my
night-shirt, trying to catch my bed as it came round.

Next morning I confessed everything to my mother, and, for several