To the "professional unemployed," I believe, the autumn entry into London is a blessed relief. He knows all the charities which can be worked for food and shelter. He has put in his penitential period in the country to give a reasonable air to the tale that he has been in work, and prepares with zest to tap the old springs of alms. London promises him winter comfort, human companionship; warm nights in shelters, when politics can be discussed and the state of the nation learnedly argued; amusing tests of his skill in bamboozling charitable societies. To the genuine seeker for work a first impression of London must be terrifying. The place is so vast, so inchoate. It seems to suggest a great organised mass into which no newcomer can hope to penetrate. The day I tramped in--on my mission of investigation--a thin rain filled the air with a blurring mist and made a horrible mud underfoot. My too realistic boots gave this mud entrance to my feet. The soft, suggy sound and feel of this mud making its way in and out was at once depressing and enraging. I cursed the weather, and London, and the resolution which had brought me on the enterprise. It seemed as if it would be just heaven to have clean feet, and stout soles between them and the loathsome dirt. I was wet through as regards clothes. That did not matter. The rain from above was clean except for a little soot. But this stuff beneath--faugh! If other men think and feel as I do, when you wish to "lift" a man out of the mire of hopelessness give him first a stout pair of boots. The Spitalfields "doss" to which I had been directed looked too much like the mud beneath felt. It was stale and dirty, from its ceiling to its floor; and all the air between was stale and dirty. The men steaming and smoking in the thick atmosphere were sympathetic to the place. I passed on. That dossery could be investigated another time, on some night when the streets were dry. At a "Rowton House" in Whitechapel I found a clean and endurable lodging, paying ninepence for a night's lodging. There were good facilities to wash and to eat and to cook one's food, and a reading-room even. One could be, clearly, comfortable enough here--if one had the ninepence.