On that Sunday evening I began to consider what excuse I might best make to my colleagues. I might send and say I was very sick. I might face them, and quarrel with them,--because of their ill-treatment of me. Or I might tell only half a lie, keeping within the letter of the truth, and say that I had not yet finished my work. But no. I would not lie at all. Late on that Sunday evening there came upon me a grand idea. I would stand up before them and confess my inability to do the work I had undertaken. I arranged the words of my little speech, and almost took delight in them. “I, who have intended to be a teacher, am now aware that I have hardly as yet become a pupil.” In such case the “Panjandrum” would be at an end. The elements had not been happily blended; but without me they could not, I was sure, be kept in any concert. The “Panjandrum,”--which I had already learned to love as a mother loves her first-born,--the dear old “Panjandrum” must perish before its birth. I felt the pity of it! The thing itself,--the idea and theory of it, had been very good. But how shall a man put forth a magazine when he finds himself unable to write a page of it within the compass of a week? The meditations of that Sunday were very bitter, but perhaps they were useful. I had long since perceived that mankind are divided into two classes,--those who shall speak, and those who shall listen to the speech of others. In seeing clearly the existence of such a division I had hitherto always assumed myself to belong to the first class. Might it not be probable that I had made a mistake, and that it would become me modestly to take my allotted place in the second? On the Monday morning I began to think that I was ill, and resolved that I would take my hat and go out into the park, and breathe some air,--let the “Panjandrum” live or die. Such another week as the last would, I fancied, send me to Hanwell. It was now November, and at ten o’clock, when I looked out, there was a soft drizzling rain coming down, and the pavement of the street was deserted. It was just the morning for work, were work possible. There still lay on the little table in the corner of the room the square single sheet of paper, with its margin doubled down, all fitted for the printer,--only that the sheet was still blank. I looked at the page, and I rubbed my brow, and I gazed into the street,--and then determined that a two hours’ ring round the Regent’s Park was the only chance left for me.