from school, joyously repeating Shakespeare's lines as I went:

"Hope is a lover's staff; walk hence with that,
And manage it against despairing thoughts."

IX.

London was rousing everywhere into morning activity, as I passed
through the streets. The shutters were being removed from the windows
of public-houses: the drink-vampyres that suck the life of London,
were opening their eyes betimes to look abroad for the new day's prey!
Small tobacco and provision-shops in poor neighbourhoods; dirty little
eating-houses, exhaling greasy-smelling steam, and displaying a leaf
of yesterday's paper, stained and fly-blown, hanging in the
windows--were already plying, or making ready to ply, their daily
trade. Here, a labouring man, late for his work, hurried by; there, a
hale old gentleman started for his early walk before breakfast. Now a
market-cart, already unloaded, passed me on its way back to the
country; now, a cab, laden with luggage and carrying pale,
sleepy-looking people, rattled by, bound for the morning train or the
morning steamboat. I saw the mighty vitality of the great city
renewing itself in every direction; and I felt an unwonted interest in
the sight. It was as if all things, on all sides, were reflecting
before me the aspect of my own heart.

But the quiet and torpor of the night still hung over Hollyoake
Square. That dreary neighbourhood seemed to vindicate its dreariness
by being the last to awaken even to a semblance of activity and life.
Nothing was stirring as yet at North Villa. I walked on, beyond the
last houses, into the sooty London fields; and tried to think of the