From this pitiable state he was rescued temporarily by a Mr. McMaster, a pious and kindly boot-maker who made a practice of assisting such unfortunates. He had designs on Thompson's soul, but when Thompson, even in his destitute condition, refused to allow his soul to be tampered with, McMaster wisely concluded that the next best thing was to save Thompson's body; and he did so. Thompson was taken into the shop, and proving hopeless at boot-making, was made errand-boy at five shillings a week. Here he got a chance to write, and covered the bootmaker's discarded account books with prose and poetry; and, according to McMaster, even submitted manuscripts to several magazines, but apparently without success. Opium, the effects of which were mistaken by McMaster for those of drink, lost Thompson this situation, and he was again thrown on the streets to sink even lower than before. It was at this time that he received the indelible impressions of the London streets which he recorded years after in his review of General Booth's _Darkest England_: "A region whose hedgerows have set to brick, whose soil is chilled to stone; where flowers are sold and women; where the men wither and the stars; whose streets to me on the most glittering day are black. For I unveil their secret meanings. I read their human hieroglyphs. I diagnose from a hundred occult signs the disease which perturbs their populous pulses. Misery cries out to me from the kerb-stone; despair passes me by in the ways; I discern limbs laden with fetters impalpable but not imponderable; I hear the shaking of invisible lashes; I see men dabbled with their own oozing life." It was at this time that Thompson, like De Quincey, was befriended by a girl of the streets, who noticed his forlorn condition and whose motherly instincts were roused by his helplessness. "Weakness and confidence, humility and reverence, were gifts unknown to her except at his hands, and she repaid them with graces as lovely as a child's, and as unhesitating as a saint's." When Thompson was finally rescued by Wilfrid Meynell, she fled from him, fearing that his friendship with her might prejudice his chances of better things. "They will not understand our friendship," she said, and then, "I always knew you were a genius." She changed her lodgings and Thompson sought her in vain. In _Sister Songs_, in a passage addressed to Sylvia (that is, little Madeline Meynell) he pays a beautiful tribute to the childishness of this girl.