ough his wanderings. His parents
had emigrated to Manchester when he was nine, and when he was sixteen
he felt that he must escape from Manchester, from the overwhelming
dreariness of the brick chimneys and their smoke cloud. He had joined a
travelling circus on its way to the Continent, and he crossed with it
from New Haven to Dieppe in charge of the lions. The circus crossed in
a great storm; Ned was not able to get about, and the tossing of the
vessel closed the ventilating slides, and when they arrived at Dieppe
the finest lion was dead.

"Well, there are other things to do in life besides feeding lions," he
said; and taking up his fiddle he became interested in it. He played it
all the way across the Atlantic, and everyone said there was no reason
why he should not play in the opera house. But an interview with the
music conductor dispelled illusions. Ned learnt from him that
improvisations were not admissible in an opera house; and when the
conductor told him what would be required of him he began to lose
interest in his musical career. As he stood jingling his pence on the
steps of the opera house a man went by who had crossed with Ned, and
the two getting into conversation, Ned was asked if he could draw a map
according to scale. It would profit him nothing to say no; he
remembered he had drawn maps in the school in Manchester. A bargain was
struck! he was to get ten pounds for his map! He ordered a table; he
pinned out the paper, and the map was finished in a fortnight. It was
of a mining district, and having nothing to do when it was finished he
thought he would like to see the mine; the owners encouraged him to go
there, and he did some mining in the morning--in the evenings he played
his fiddle. Eventually he became a journalist.

He wandered and wrote, and wandered again, until one day, finding
himself in New York, he signed an agreement and edited a newspaper. But
he soon wearied of expressing the same opinions, and as the newspaper
could not change its opinions Ned volunteered to go to Cuba and write
about the insurgents. And he wrote articles that inflamed the Americans
against the Spaniards, and went over to the American lines to fight
when the Americans declared war against Spain, and fought so well that
he might have become a general if the war had lasted. But it was over,
and, overpowered by an extraordinary dislike to New York, he felt he
must travel. He wanted to see Europe again, and remembering