Gloomy were the reflections that haunted my mind for the first three weeks after my arrival in London. Often and far as I had been from Scotland, never until now had I been home-sick--if it could be called so in one who had neither kindred nor home in the world. Destitute of kindred as I was, the feeling seemed to extend my relationship: every Scotchman being my relation, and his accents music to my ears. An unaccountable melancholy was upon me; and I felt a strange presentiment as if some evil were about to befall me. I felt no pleasure, as I was wont, in walking about. My time was spent at my lodgings, in Lower Thames Street, save when I went occasionally to the neighbourhood of Covent Garden, to visit Captain H----. Even these visits had become irksome, as no good seemed likely to arise to me from them. I was always received in the most friendly manner. Still there was a constraint upon me I could not overcome, arising from the relative situation in which we had formerly stood towards each other as private seaman and captain. I would have felt far more at my ease had he treated me in a more distant manner. Frugal as my mode of life was, my cash wore done apace, and I had fixed upon no mode of obtaining a new supply. Once or twice I had made inquiries among the shipping for a situation, without success. Perhaps the fault was my own, as I was rather nice to please, and not over anxious to go to sea if I could do better. I hoped that the captain or his friend would propose something for my advantage; and thus the time had run on, while my lowness of spirits increased upon me. The weather had become wet and foggy. I cared not to leave the house, and remained at home for several days, so depressed that I even wished I were dead, and away from a world in which I had suffered so much. The pleasures I had also enjoyed were entirely blotted out from my recollection. All my life appeared to have been a scene of suffering, with no prospect before me but further misery and endurance.