Weeks and weeks went by and, having now started to drink, and losing control of my will in this disappointment, I had come down to my last ten shillings, and had a good seven months to go before my money was again due. First of all I had serious thoughts of destroying this work--the whole two hundred and odd copies, which were under lock and key in my room, and to then set to work carefully on new matter, and, when my income was again due, to again mortgage it in another attempt. Being very impulsive, this no doubt would have been there and then commenced, had I not been confronted with the difficulty of doing so. There was only one way of doing this properly, and that was by fire, which would require privacy. My room was the only place where I could do this without being seen, but that contained neither stove nor grate; and, even if it had, two hundred books would take a number of sleepless nights to render into ashes. I thought with some bitterness of having to go on tramp again, and it was in one of these bitter moments that I swore a great oath that these copies, good or bad, should maintain me until the end of the year. For I would distribute the books here and there, sending them to successful people, and they would probably pay for their copies, perhaps not so much for what merit they might think the work contained, as for the sake of circumstances. This idea no sooner possessed me than I began preparing for its execution. For this purpose I obtained stamps and envelopes, and six copies were at once posted. The result was seen in a couple of days--three letters, two containing the price of the book, and the third from the Charity Organisation, the latter writing on behalf of a gentleman who had become interested, and would like to come to my assistance. Remembering these people in the past, through my former experience with them, I had no great hopes at the present time, in spite of the kind hearted interest of the gentleman in question. However, I called on them the next morning, and after the usual long wait in a side room--which, I believe, is not through any great stress of business, but so as to bring one's heart down to the freezing point of abject misery, and to extinguish one by one his many hopes--after this weary waiting, I received an interview. There is not sufficient venom in my disposition to allow me to describe this meeting in words fit and bitter for its need. This life is too short to enable me to recover from my astonishment, which will fill me for a good many years to come. The questions and answers which had passed between us on our former interview,--two years previous, were now before them. But they questioned again in the same strain, and my answers corresponded with those of the past, for I told no lies. Apparently they had no chance here, so they came at once to the business in hand. "You have written to a gentleman, asking for his assistance?" Not liking this way of