This digression is of malice aforethought, because I cannot help feeling that readers will say "I wish Bullen wouldn't so persistently sue for our sympathy. Surely he must have had some good times." And that is the worst of the simple annals of the poor; they are deeply interesting of course to the protagonists, but are apt to become wearisome in the recital, because, as the Irishman said of his wife, they are all worse and no better. However I went on, doggedly, hopelessly, not because I was a brave man struggling with adversity, but because as far as my limited intelligence went I couldn't do anything else. Several people, one of whom most generously helped me over a tremendously difficult stile, suggested bankruptcy as being the obvious way out of all my troubles, but that I felt was impossible. True, I _was_ a bankrupt _de facto_ but not _de jure_, and I believed that if I did become a bankrupt in law, I should lose my last hope of earning a living, my job at the office. So I ruled that suggestion out as impracticable, for supposing I did lose my job, it was no figure of speech to call it my last hope. I was rapidly nearing forty, my own profession was irrevocably closed to me even if the state of my health would have allowed me to take it up again, and as for my other employment, with thousands of abler, younger men clamouring for it, what possible prospect had I? and I had a wife and five young children! I will not say that I was absolutely friendless, but the two or three faithful friends I had were powerless to help me except in a desperate emergency, and at a great personal sacrifice then. As a dear friend said to me the other day, while we were discussing the condition of a mutual friend who had become the victim of a most serious misfortune absolutely without fault of his own: "There is nothing more heart-breaking than to have a friend who is what the Spaniards call _gastados_, used up, no more good in this pushing world. You can't keep him, you can't ask anybody else to keep him, and in spite of yourself, with the best will in the world, you get tired of his incessant appeals for help, however piteous and sincere."