as of the suburban portion of a great London railway terminus. It was
positively pretty. People were shopping with comparative leisure,
omnibus horses were being rubbed down and watered on the west side of
the Square, out of the way of the main stream of traffic. A postman,
clearing the letter-box at the office, stopped his work momentarily to
read the contents of a postcard. For the moment I understood Caesar's
feelings on the brink of the Rubicon, and the emotions of Cortes "when
with eagle eyes he stared at the Pacific." I was on the threshold of
great events. Behind me was orthodox London; before me the unknown.

It was distinctly a Caesarian glance, full of deliberate revolt, that I
bestowed upon the street called Sloane; that clean, orderly
thoroughfare which leads to Knightsbridge, and thence either to the
respectabilities of Kensington or the plush of Piccadilly.

Setting my hat at a wild angle, I stepped with a touch of
_abandon_ along the King's Road to meet the charming, impoverished
artists whom our country refuses to recognise.

My first glimpse of the Manresa Road was, I confess, a complete
disappointment. Never was Bohemianism more handicapped by its setting
than that of Chelsea, if the Manresa Road was to be taken as a
criterion. Along the uninviting uniformity of this street no trace of
unorthodoxy was to be seen. There came no merry, roystering laughter
from attic windows. No talented figures of idle geniuses fetched pints
of beer from the public-house at the corner. No one dressed in an
ancient ulster and a battered straw hat and puffing enormous clouds of
blue smoke from a treasured clay pipe gazed philosophically into space
from a doorway. In point of fact, save for a most conventional
butcher-boy, I was alone in the street.