"And what are you doing now?" The question of these school
contemporaries of mine, and their greeting the other day in
Piccadilly (I remember how shabby I felt as I stood talking
to them)--for a day or two that question haunted me. And
behind their well-bred voices I seemed to hear the voice of
Schoolmasters and Tutors, of the Professional Classes, and
indeed of all the world. What, as a plain matter of fact, was I
doing, how did I spend my days? The life-days which I knew were
numbered, and which were described in sermons and on tombstones
as so irrevocable, so melancholy-brief.

I decided to change my life. I too would be somebody in my time
and age; my contemporaries should treat me as an important person.
I began thinking of my endeavours, my studies by the midnight
lamp, my risings at dawn for stolen hours of self-improvement.

But alas, the day, the little day, was enough just then. It
somehow seemed enough, just to be alive in the Spring, with the
young green of the trees, the smell of smoke in the sunshine; I
loved the old shops and books, the uproar darkening and
brightening in the shabby daylight. Just a run of good-looking
faces--and I was always looking for faces--would keep me amused.
And London was but a dim-lit stage on which I could play in
fancy any part I liked. I woke up in the morning like Byron to
find myself famous; I was drawn like Chatham to St. Paul's, amid
the cheers of the Nation, and sternly exclaimed with Cromwell,
"Take away that bauble," as I sauntered past the Houses of
Parliament.