With ample time to spare, I strolled up to the huge pile of buildings at the back of the Law Courts, which I in common with many happier Londoners had never known the use of until then. Indeed they had not long been finished and the approach to them, across what some of the newspapers ironically called at that time Strand Common, was quite appropriately depressing. It had that effect upon me at anyrate, added to all that horror of the unknown which is so natural to imaginative people and withal so unjustifiable in nine cases out of ten. Being full early I sat down on one of the benches which even then were provided by some thoughtful souls for the use of weary jetsam from the roaring tide of the Strand or Fleet Street, and endeavoured to concentrate my thoughts upon the approaching ordeal. It was a hopeless failure, as any attempts at meditation have always been with me. My thoughts will only flow under the stimulus of speech or pen action, in silence and alone they are uncontrollable, and range fruitlessly over the whole field of my experience. But, behold, to me came sudden and grateful relief in the person of an old patron of mine who held some snug billet as an official reporter at the Law Courts facing us. Having an hour to spare, he had come there to smoke a contemplative pipe and enjoy the unwonted rest from recording in wiggly hieroglyphics the mass of banalities, lies, and legalities which it was his business to perpetuate in print. He was an enthusiast in photography--indeed, it was his only hobby--and at the very slightest sign that I was attending to what he said, he launched forth into a flood of talk about lenses and exposures, and focussing and developing, about all of which I knew rather less than I did of cuneiform inscriptions. But he was so pleased, and my face expressed so much interest (which I swear I could not feel), that he babbled on for the hour he had to spare. Then suddenly he said, "But what are you doing here?" I replied casually as if it was an ordinary occurrence with me, "Oh, I'm waiting to file my petition in Bankruptcy as soon as it's eleven o'clock." "Indeed," he answered, "well, you needn't be in a hurry, you won't find anybody in there that is. Good morning," and he left me.