That the England from whose loins such master men and women have sprung should have bred also the festering spawn of human vermin that litters many of the mean streets of London, aye, and the seats in its parks and gardens, is a tragic humiliation; an indictment, too, as I see it. Charity may cover a multitude of sins. It can never cover this running sore; or, if it should ever cover it completely, so much the worse; for I swear it can never heal, cleanse, or remove it. Nothing sentimental, personal, and voluntary, nothing sporadic and spasmodic can ever accomplish that. And to approach it with bleatings about the will of the people, universal suffrage, old age, or any other kind of pension, dole, or the like, is to be guilty of a cruel and contemptible kind of mockery. V Looking back across the long succession of crowded years upon the period of my struggle to obtain a foothold in the London world of journalism and literature, I see a certain amount of pathos, some bathos, and something too in the way of steadfast, unmercenary endurance, which is not altogether unworthy of respect. In my humble opinion a foothold in that world was at least rather better worth having in those days than it is to-day for a thinking man of literary instincts. It was certainly vastly harder to obtain, in the absence of any influence or assistance from established friends. Of late years I have met representatives of a type of young journalist which had not yet come into existence when I arrived in London. In those days (when the published price of novels was still 31s. 6d., and halfpenny dailies were unknown) there were three kinds of newspaper men. There were the hacks, very able fellows, some of them, but mostly given to bar and taproom life; there were thoroughly well qualified, widely informed, sober pressmen of the middle sort, who often spent their whole lives in one employ; and there were literary men, frequently of high scholarly attainments, who wrote for newspapers. To-day, there are not very many representatives of these three divisions. The modern host of journeymen, with their captains, keen men of business, may represent a great advance upon their predecessors. Since I am told we live in an age of wonderfully rapid progress, I suppose they must. They certainly are different. To realise this fully one has only to come in contact, once, with one of the few surviving practitioners of the earlier type. They stand out like trees in--shall I say?--a flower-bed.