After writing a sentence or two he tore it up, as he found that he could not produce what he wanted. Time after time he tried, and only succeeded in being commonplace to the last degree. All his ideas of a tender farewell, a beautiful poetic letter, seemed impossible of realization; instead, he produced effusions which looked as if they might have been copied from the _Family Herald_. At last he wrote simply "Good-bye," adding his new address. He tried to think of someone else to write to, but could not. His father he hated and feared; there was no thrill in a letter to him. It all seemed very flat and commonplace. These last few hours were not at all as he had pictured to himself. Then he went out into the Whitechapel High Street. The costermongers' stalls, lit with flaring naphtha lamps, made the street nearly as bright as in the day-time. The pavement was greasy to walk on, and it was thronged by a vast crowd walking slowly up and down. The fog was settling over the houses, and the place smelt like a stale sponge. He wandered slowly down towards the church, picking his way among the mob. Coarse Jewish women with false hair shouted to one another. Girls with high cheek-bones, smeared with red and white, caught hold of his arm, whispering evil suggestions to him, and cursing him for a fool when he turned away. There was a lurid glow in the air. He stopped outside a stationer's window, gazing idly at the specimens of invitation cards in the window. "_Mr. and Mrs. Levenstein Request the pleasure of your company At the occasion of their son's circumcision._" In the brilliant light he saw the gutters littered with decayed vegetables, bones, and rags. Two old women stood at a corner of the Commercial Road. He heard one of them say, "Yes, it was still-born, so she _said_; but I 'eard it squeak before Annie come out of the room." He passed on. A piano-organ, with a cage of bedraggled birds on the top, struck up, the handle being turned by a boy, while his father went among the crowd showing a smooth white stump where his hand should have been. The door of the Free Library stood open. He went in. The room was crowded with men standing about reading the evening papers. He walked up and down through the rows of stands, as if looking for someone, after a while coming out again into the street. A sailor knocked against him, and swore at him for a "bleeding fool." He was passing a pillar-box, when he remembered his letter to Scott, and he posted it, hearing the hollow echo of its fall with the sense of a curious subjective disturbance in the air around. He felt something was by him in the noisy street, something waiting by him for the end. He looked hastily over his shoulder, and then laughed grimly.