k liked living in the huge
city (though, curiously enough, many did), but they gravitated toward it
because the great aim, always, and in those conditions necessarily, was
to make money. There was more money "knocking about," so people said, in
London than anywhere else; so that was the place for which one made.

I started for London with a capital of precisely eleven guineas over and
above my railway fare--and left it again on the same day.

II

AT THE WATER'S EDGE

"Now a little before them, there was on the left-hand of the Road, a
Meadow, and a Stile to go over into it, and that Meadow is called
By-Path-Meadow."--_The Pilgrim's Progress._

My friend, Leslie Wheeler, had left Cambridge a few months before my
summons home, in order to enter his father's office in Moorgate Street.
His father was of the mysteriously named tribe of "financial agents,"
and had evidently found it a profitable calling.

As I never understood anything of even the nomenclature of finance, I
will not attempt to describe the business into which my friend had been
absorbed; but I remember that it afforded occupation for dozens of
gentlemanly young fellows, the correctness of whose _coiffure_ and
general appearance was beyond praise. These beautifully groomed young
gentlemen sat upon high stools at desks of great brilliancy. They used
an ingenious arrangement of foolscap paper to protect their shirt-cuffs
from contact with baser things, and one of the reasons for the evident
care lavished upon the disposition of their hair may have been the fact
that they made it a point of honour to go hatless when taking the air or
out upon business during the day. Their general appearance and
deportment in the office and outside always conveyed to me the
suggestion that they were persons of some wealth and infinite leisure;
but I have been assured that they were hard-working clerks, whose
salaries, even in these simpler days, would not be deemed extravagant.
These salaries, I have been told, worked out at an average of perhaps
L120 or L130 a year.

Now London meant no more to me at that time than a place where, upon
rare occasions, one dined in splendour, went to a huge and gilded
music-hall, cultivated a bad headache, and presently sought to ease it
by eating a nightmarish supper, and eating it against time. My allowance
at Cambridge had, no doubt fortunately for my digestion, allowed of but
few excursions to the capital; but my fr