e road to
ruin; gloomy the clouds that settled round me as I approached that
dismal terminus. Then, when too late, I began to regret my folly. I
seemed to wake as if from a dream, from a state of helpless
infatuation, in which my acts were scarcely the effect of my own
volition. The general out-look became decidedly uninviting.

About eleven o'clock one spring night of the year 1892, I was standing
close to the railings of the Whitworth Park in my native city of
Manchester, to whose dull provincial shades I had retired at the
enforced close of my creditable career. I remember that I was engaged
in wondering what on earth I could have done with all my money, the
only tangible return for which appeared to be an intimate and peculiar
knowledge of the French language and of certain undesirable phases of
French life. The hour, as I have said, was late, and Moss Lane, the
street in which I stood disconsolate, dark and deserted. Presently
there came along towards me a man whose uncertain gait was strongly
suggestive of the influence of alcohol. He stopped upon reaching me,
and asked if I could direct him to Victoria Park. This is an extensive
semi-private enclosure, where numbers of the plutocracy of
Cottonopolis have their residences. One of its several gates is nearly
opposite the spot where Moss Lane leads into Oxford Street, which fact
I communicated to my questioner. To my surprise he, by way of
acknowledgment, struck his hand into mine and shook it fervently.

"Shake hands, shake hands," he said; "that's right--you're talking to
a gentleman, though you mightn't think it."

I certainly should not have thought it. He was a short, thick-set man,
of about five feet and two or three inches, shabbily dressed; and his
unsteady lurch, swollen features, and odorous breath, told plainly of
a heavy debauch. Amused by his manner, I entered into conversation
with him. He was, it appeared, a sailor, a Lancashire man, and, if he
was to be believed, very respectably connected in Manchester. I
gathered that he had ended a boyhood of contumacy by running away to
sea, his people, though they had practically disowned him, allowing
him a pound a week. This allowance had for some time past been
stopped, and he was coming up in person to investigate the why and
wherefore. Having a week or two before come off a voyage at Liverpool,
he had at that port drawn L75 in pay, which he had spent in two days
and nights of revelry, an assertion to whi