So when I first settled down ashore to steady employment in an office at a fixed salary of £2 per week, after fifteen years of irresponsibility as regards domestic affairs, I quickly learned that I was very callow indeed in those matters. My first false step was in buying furniture, wherewith to make a home, on the hire system. It must be remembered that I had a wife and one child, but that I was practically beginning a new life. And I did so by hanging round my neck a burden of debt which I did not get rid of for fifteen years, and then--but I must not anticipate the regular sequence of my story. The next was to take a house. I had tried apartments several times, but something always went wrong, I was always made to feel that I was only in the house on sufferance, and being an enthusiast for peace, I always moved rather than have a row. But moving as a fairly regular experience is apt to pall upon one. It costs a good deal of money even when you hire the local greengrocer's van and horse at one and sixpence an hour, and it is very hard work, for unless you buckle to and do the lion's share yourself, you find at nightfall that you have just got in, you have parted with the bulk of your savings, and the best part of a heavy night's work is before you, putting up bedsteads and reducing the chaotic heap of your belongings to a condition in which you can find what you want within reasonable distance of the time that you want it. For this and other reasons which I need not now specify I decided to take a house. I satisfied myself that by letting the floor below and the floor above the one I intended to keep for ourselves at the current rate in the neighbourhood, carefully ascertained beforehand, that I should live rent free or nearly so, and of course in a neighbourhood like that it was unthinkable that I should ever be empty. I mean the house of course. By which process of reasoning I demonstrated that I possessed one of the prime requirements of a tradesman--hope that my venture would be justified by the profit on my outlay. But, alas, I was not made of the fibre necessary in order to be a successful sub-landlord. By the end of the first year of my tenancy I had come to the conclusion that I was a known mark for all the undesirables in the neighbourhood. If a tenant was clean he was utterly unreasonable, looking upon me as his bond-slave, and his right to do as he liked indefeasible, even though it might be destructive to my peace of mind or rest of body. And his one argument in reply to any remonstrance was, "I pay my rent and can go where I like. And don't you interfere with me."