He certainly had not embarrassed himself by paying anything to me. But the regular occupation had been excellent practice, and the immediate ponderable result was the formation of a circle of acquaintances among literary men and artists. We drank, in excellent claret, to the resurrection of the dead periodical. But we honoured the toast as those who have no hope. Mark Tapley and I parted on excellent terms. We walked down the Burlington Arcade, and took leave of each other when we reached Piccadilly. His last word was a jape at the expense of himself and his venture. The last sound I heard of him was a particularly jolly laugh as he ambled off. This collapse of the Ainsworthian magazine; my “call”; the removal from lodgings in Woburn Place to chambers in the Temple—these may be conveniently taken as roughly marking the end of my informal novitiate. I don’t know whether the habit of giving “call suppers” still persists. I was persuaded that the obligation to invite my friends to one was incumbent on me. The repast was ordered at my chambers for eight, and all my guests turned up. On the other side of Fleet Street, and nearly opposite Middle Temple Lane, was an oyster-house and restaurant called Prosser’s. At that establishment the supper was ordered. I regret to say that I recollect very little of the entertainment. My health was proposed, and a bright career at the Bar foretold for me by a gentleman who is now an ornament of the judicial bench. An artist present drew a picture entitled “Coke upon Littleton,” which evoked roars of laughter by reason of its audacious Rabelaisian humour. And an Hibernian journalist, who is now an English M.P., sang “The Wearin’ o’ the Green.” I replied—coherently—to the toast of my health. After that things became a trifle blurred. Prosser had done me too well. CHAPTER IV INTO THE MAELSTROM A call to the Bar and a residence in the Temple necessitate a somewhat intimate acquaintance with Fleet Street. But, of course, they do not make of one a Fleet Street man in the journalistic meaning of that phrase. Some time was to pass yet ere I could regard myself as free of the street—so to say. The haunts of the Templar are not those of the Pressman. The former, when of an afternoon he quits the “dusty purlieus of the Law,” usually hastens westward. The haunts of the journalist are in Fleet Street itself. Yet it was to barristers, after all, that I owed my initiation into the mysteries of the newspaper world. In those days a considerable number of young barristers—and some old ones—were more or less dependent on their contributions to the Press for an income. Tired of idling in chambers and “Beckoning the tardy briefs, The briefs that never came.”