ite of chambers over the ancient
gate of Cliffords Inn. Now it would be easy enough, and the temptation
is great, to convey the impression that the writer had arrived in the
Metropolis to make his name and win fame and fortune with his
manuscript. So runs the tale in many a novel issued during the last
twenty-five years. It is time, therefore, to invent something new. The
penniless law-student who writes a best seller and wins the love of a
celebrated actress must make way for a sea-going engineer with a
year's wages and a volume of essays in his pocket, and who had not
succeeded in winning the love of anybody. Indeed the singular
moderation of the demands of this young man will be appreciated by
any one who has been afflicted with ambition, for he has never at
any time desired either to write a play, edit a magazine, or marry a
prima-donna. At the particular juncture when he took over the little
suite of furnished chambers from a young newspaper man who had
received a sudden invitation to visit a rich uncle, his principal
preoccupation was to pass his examination for his certificate
of competency as a first-class engineer. To this end he began a
mysterious existence possible only to the skilled Londoner. For the
benefit of those who are not skilled Londoners, the following
description may evoke interest.

In the morning on waking, he saw, through the small bowed window which
looked out into the Inn, the sunlight shining upon the gilded gothic
roof of the Rolls Building and possibly touching the tops of the trees
of the grimy enclosure. Stepping through into the front room he could
lean out of a mullioned affair below which he could read the date
carved in the stone--1472--and looking up a long narrow court he could
watch the morning traffic of the Strand passing the farther end like
the film of a cinematograph. Down below, a gentleman who sold studs,
shoe-laces, and dying pigs on the curb, and who kept his stock in a
cupboard under the arch, was preparing to start out for the day. A
dying pig, it may be mentioned, was a toy much in demand among
stock-broking clerks and other frivolous young gentlemen in the City,
and consisted of a bladder shaped like a pig whose snout contained a
whistle which gave out on deflation an almost human note of anguish.
Should the hour be before eight, which was probable since the author
had contracted the habit, at sea, of rising at four, he would be
further exhilarated by seeing his land