Nor is that all. For it is in these same years, turning aside from the pleasures of home—from such innocent round games as Conceal the Thimble or the less familiar Up Jenkins, or from the happy singing round the family harmonium of such an humorous glee as Three Blind Mice—that he enters the Pit (so appropriately named) of some garish and degrading theatre. It is a sorrowful spectacle. But happily for my own sake, I had already been so deeply saddened by it that I had long since resolved, when the necessity should arise, to take every possible precaution. No sooner, therefore, had I obtained my appointment than I hastened to enroll myself as a member of the Peckham Branch of the Non-Smokers’ League as well as of the Kennington Division of the Society for the Prohibition of the Strong Drink Traffic. Congenial in every way, I not only discovered in these an enormous sphere for the exercise of my influence, but the membership of both societies conferred the privilege of wearing a small badge or bone medallion. A slightly convex and circular plaque to be pinned on the lapel of the wearer’s coat, the token of membership of the Non-Smokers’ League was about an inch in diameter. Of a pale cream colour, it was tastefully wreathed with dark blue lilies, symbolic of purity, the centre of it being occupied with the initials _N.S.L._ boldly imprinted in the same colours. No less decorative to the wearer than intriguing to the beholder, a reply to the question so often put as to what the initials _N.S.L._ stood for frequently afforded a valuable opportunity for soul-intercourse on the subject of tobacco. Nor was the medallion of the Society for the Prohibition of the Strong Drink Traffic either less attractive or efficient as an instigator of fruitful converse. Slightly larger—its diameter was an inch and a quarter—its ground-work was of an olive green, the letters _S.P.S.D.T._ richly emerging from this in an ingenious monogram of canary yellow. Into the work of these societies I now threw myself with all the vehemence at my command, and had soon forced myself into the innermost councils of the local branch of each. Meeting every fortnight in a neighbouring church hall, the Peckham Branch of the Non-Smokers’ League did not confine itself merely to the organization of these central gatherings. Valuable as they were in providing a pulpit for lectures upon nicotine-poisoning and its attendant evils, we rightly regarded the outside world as the main field of our endeavours. Provided with such strikingly headed pamphlets as _A Gentleman or a Chimney?_ or the even more dramatic and spiritually searching _Your Soul or Your Cigar?_ we would range the streets addressing obvious smokers, or station ourselves upon the pavement in the neighbourhood of tobacconists’ shops. In this way, though frequently required to endure verbal persecution, I am proud to believe that the work performed by us was both timely and enduring.