It was in the year '39, a little before the "Dog-cart Nuisance," as it used to be called, was abolished in London, that Ingram Wilson had some curious thoughts as he stood looking at a very old and interesting dog, in one of the by-streets of the Borough.--Ingram Wilson, it ought to have been first said, was a young man who had forsaken an engagement on a thriving newspaper in an opulent agricultural district, and had "come up to London," partly through a slight disagreement with his former patron, but chiefly through a vivid persuasion, that London was the only true starting point for "a man of genius," a title to which young Ingram laid claim. Now, this claim had never been questioned by any one in the country, and Ingram thought every one would as readily acknowledge it in the metropolis. How could Ingram Wilson help thinking so, when every body had asked him, for three years, "why he did not go to London, and make his fortune?" But, good-lack! when Ingram arrived in London, and had stared at all the lions for three days, he began to feel himself in a desert, even amidst thousands. He knew nobody, and nobody knew him. He stept into two or three newspaper offices, stationers' shops, and booksellers' little warehouses, asking questions about an engagement; but people looked at him so suspiciously, that he grew afraid of asking further. He looked at the Times, and the Herald, and the Chronicle every morning, in one coffee-house or other--walked to this place and that--or wrote letters of application, in answer to advertisements, but all was in vain: two months fled entirely, and he had not received a single hour's employ, or earned one farthing in London; and he was now reduced to his last sovereign! Feeling the necessity of an instant resort to the strictest and most prudential economy, he quitted his lodgings, and found one, (a beggarly bed, a chair, and broken table, in a fifth floor,) at eighteen-pence a week. All day he was out, and sometimes dined on threepenn'orth of boiled beef and potatoes, and sometimes he didn't: however, he contrived to make the sovereign last one more month, for he still found no employ. And now he was come to selling or pawning--what he had never been driven to before, in his life. His books none of the pawn-brokers would have: they were an article that could be turned to no account, if not redeemed. So Ingram pawned his watch; but for so small a sum, that though he was still more economical, he could only stretch another month on the "lent money," as he called it, little supposing he would never see the watch again. And then went extra articles of clothing, till he could go no farther. And when six months were gone, part of his books were gone likewise; but they were _sold_ at comparatively waste-paper price at the second-hand booksellers.