Once--in that nightmare-time which still doth haunt My dreams, a grim, unbidden visitant-- * * * * * I waited the inevitable last. Then there came past A child; like thee, a spring-flower; but a flower Fallen from the budded coronal of Spring, And through the city-streets blown withering. She passed,--O brave, sad, lovingest, tender thing! And of her own scant pittance did she give, That I might eat and live: Then fled, a swift and trackless fugitive. Therefore I kissed in thee The heart of Childhood, so divine for me; And her, through what sore ways, And what unchildish days, Borne from me now, as then, a trackless fugitive. In February 1887 came the crisis of Thompson's fate. At that time Thompson scraped together a few shillings somehow and began to decipher and put together the half-obliterated manuscript of his article on _Paganism, Old and New_, written, I suppose, at McMaster's. "I came simultaneously to my last page and my last halfpenny," says Thompson, "and went forth to drop the manuscript in the letter-box of the Catholic magazine, _Merrie England_. Next day I spent the halfpenny on two boxes of matches and began the struggle for life." Among all the important letters that have been posted since man became a letter-writing animal, that letter of Thompson's to the editor of _Merrie England_ holds, it seems to me, a prominent place. One trembles to think what might have happened if that manuscript had never reached the editor or been overlooked by him. In all probability Thompson would have died of starvation in the streets of London, and a poet who may prove to be one of the first in our literature would have gone "mute and inglorious" to an outcast's grave. But though it lay pigeon-holed for six months without receiving the attention of a busy editor, in due course the letter and accompanying manuscript were read. To no better man could Thompson have appealed than the editor of _Merrie England_, Wilfrid Meynell, a man whose hand was ever stretched out to help the unfortunate. At present, however, he knew nothing of Thompson except that his essay showed a master-hand. After some difficulty Meynell managed to get into communication with the author through a druggist to whom Thompson owed money for opium, and many days after, Mr. Meynell, in his workroom, was told that Mr. Thompson wished to see him. "Show him up," he said, and was left alone. What follows is told in the words of Everard Meynell: "Then the door opened and a strange hand was thrust in. The door closed but Thompson had not entered. Again it opened, again it shut. At the third attempt, a very waif of a man came in. No such figure had been looked for; more ragged and unkempt than the average beggar, with no shirt beneath his coat, and bare feet in broken shoes, he found my father at a loss for words."