Over the little meal that I presently prepared, with the aid of the oil-stove, my spirits, which had fallen steadily during the hunt for a room, brightened considerably. Pipe in mouth I made some alterations in the disposition of my furniture, placing the little table nearer to the window, and shifting the bed to give me a glimpse of sky when I should be occupying it. The oil-stove made a regrettable stench I found, and the lamp appeared to suffer from some nervous affection which made its flame jump spasmodically at intervals. The mattress on my bed was extraordinarily diversified in contour by little mountain ranges, kopjes which could not be induced to amalgamate with its general plan. Also, I was not so much alone in my sanctum as I had hoped to be. There were other forms of life, whose company I do not think I ever entirely evaded during my whole period as a lodger of the poorest grade in London. But for the time these trifles did not greatly trouble me. Drunken brawls which occurred later in the evening, immediately under my window, were a nuisance. But it was all new; my health of mind and body was sound and unstrained; and I presently went to bed rather well pleased with myself, after an hour spent in considering and adding to sundry notes I had accumulated, for articles and sketches presently to be written. My hope was to be able to win a place in London journalism without having any sort of an appointment. The very phrase 'free-lance' appealed to my sense of the romantic. 'All the clever fellows are free-lances, you know, in the Old Country.' I recalled many such statements made to me in Sydney. Prudence might have led me to offer myself for a post of some kind, if the editor to whom my letter of introduction was addressed had been visible. But he was not in London; and, in my heart, I was rather glad. It should be as a free agent, an unknown adventurer in Grub Street, that I would win my journalistic and literary spurs in the Old World. Other men had succeeded.... Musing in this hopeful vein I fell asleep, with never a hint of a presentiment of what did actually lie before me. I suppose the chiefest boon that mortals enjoy is just that negative blessing: their total inability to see even so far into the future as to-morrow morning. IV The compilation of anything like a detailed record of my first two years in London would be a task to alarm a Zola. I could not possibly face it; and, if I did, no good end could be served by such a harrowing of my own feelings. Such a compilation would be a veritable monument of squalid details; of details infinitely mean and small, and, for the most part, infinitely, unredeemedly ugly. Heaven knows I have no need to remind myself by the act of writing of all those dismal details. Mere poverty, starvation itself, even, may be lightsome things, by comparison with the fetid misery which surrounded me during the major part of those two years.