ondon, but it is also for that reason quiet to work in. I wonder why
it is so cheap. Some people might be suspicious, but I did not even ask
the reason. No answer is better than a lie. If only I could remove the
cats from the outside and the rats from the inside. I feel that I shall
grow accustomed more and more to its peculiarities, and shall die here.
Ah, that expression reads queerly and gives a wrong impression: I meant
_live and die_ here. I shall renew the lease from year to year till one
of us crumbles to pieces. From present indications the building will be
the first to go.

* * * * *

Nov. 16.--This morning I woke to find my clothes scattered about the
room, and a cane chair overturned beside the bed. My coat and waistcoat
looked just as if they had been _tried on_ by someone in the night. I
had horribly vivid dreams, too, in which someone covering his face with
his hands kept coming close up to me, crying out as if in pain, "Where
can I find covering? Oh, who will clothe me?" How silly, and yet it
frightened me a little. It was so dreadfully real. It is now over a year
since I last walked in my sleep and woke up with such a shock on the
cold pavement of Earl's Court Road, where I then lived. I thought I was
cured, but evidently not. This discovery has rather a disquieting effect
upon me. To-night I shall resort to the old trick of tying my toe to the
bed-post.

* * * * *

Nov. 17.--Last night I was again troubled by most oppressive dreams.
Someone seemed to be moving in the night up and down my room, sometimes
passing into the front room, and then returning to stand beside the bed
and stare intently down upon me. I was being watched by this person all
night long. I never actually awoke, though I was often very near it. I
suppose it was a nightmare from indigestion, for this morning I have one
of my old vile headaches. Yet all my clothes lay about the floor when I
awoke, where they had evidently been flung (had I tossed them?) during
the dark hours, and my trousers trailed over the step into the front
room.

Worse than this, though--I fancied I noticed about the room in the
morning that strange, fetid odour. Though very faint, its mere
suggestion is foul and nauseating. What in the world can it be, I
wonder?... In future I shall lock my door.

* * * * *

Nov. 26.--I have accomplished a lot of good work during th