cross the Channel, was useful for a time. But at last there was nothing more for him to take or for me to offer, and I was alone in London with a vengeance. Thousands of well-to-do people endure privation and discomfort every year for the pure pleasure of it. In my campaigning days I lived on black bread and onions and dirty water for seven weeks, and topped up that agreeable record with four days' absolute starvation, But I had a pocketful of money, though there was nothing to be bought with it, and I had staunch comrades, and we were marching on with the certainty of plenty before us. It was all endured easily enough, and now and then there were outbursts of rollicking jocundity in spite of it The mere physical suffering of privation is not a thousandth part of its pain. The sense of loneliness, of defeat, of unmerited neglect; the blind rebellion against the inequality with which the world's chances are distributed; the impotent sense of power which finds no outlet--these are the things which make poverty bitter. But there was nothing else for it, and I took up _la vie en plein air_. My favourite chamber in the Hotel of the Beautiful Star during the hours of darkness was the Thames Embankment. I have passed many years in London since then, and must have heard the boom of Big Ben and the monotonous musical chime which precedes it many thousands of times. They have rarely greeted a conscious ear without bringing back a memory of the stealing river (all dull shine and deep shadow), the lights on the spanning bridges, the dim murmur of distant traffic, the shot-tower glooming up against the sky, the bude-light flaring from the tower of the Palace of Parliament, the sordid homeless folks huddled together on the benches, the solemn tramp of the peeler, and the flash of the bullseye light that awoke the chilled and stiffened sleepers. There is a certain odour of Thames Embankment which I should recognise anywhere. I have encountered it often, and it brings back the scene as suddenly and as vividly as the chimes themselves. There is plenty of elbow-room in the Hôtel de la Belle Etoile, and there is water enough; but in other respects the provision it offers is scanty and comfortless. I spent four days and nights in it, and was on the borders of despair, when what looked like a mere chance saved me. Suppose I had not walked down Fleet Street; suppose I had not stopped to look at the little cork balls in Lipscombe's window, so mournfully emblematic of my own condition; suppose that the unsuspected good-hearted friend had not come by and clapped me on the shoulder, what would have happened? _Quien sabe?_ These are the narrow chances of life which give one pause sometimes. He came, however, the unsuspected helpful friend.