a
vagrant in the streets and alleys. He made one or two brave essays at
regular work of the most commonplace character, but without success.
The worn copies of Aeschylus and Blake in the pockets of this ragged
and gaunt roustabout contained no useful hints for the difficulties of
the peculiar situation; its harshness could be transmuted into
temporary and blessed oblivion by a drug whenever the means for
purchase could be acquired. The Guildhall Library was much frequented
until shabbiness was excluded by the policeman. This outcast poet,
approaching thirty years of age, was at various times a bootblack, a
newsboy, a vendor of matches, a nocturnal denizen of wharves and
lounger on the benches of city-parks. His cough-racked frame was the
exposed target of cold and rain and winds. He became used to hunger.
At one time a six-pence, for holding a horse, was his only earnings for
a week. It was while he was aimlessly roaming the streets one night
almost delirious from starvation that a prosperous shoe-merchant,
benevolently engaged in religious rescue-work, came across Thompson,
and, struck by the incongruity of his gentle speech, induced him to
accept employment in his shop. But one cannot allow business to suffer
on account of an inveterate blunderer, even though the blunderer wear
wings and has endeared himself to the family. Mr. McMaster, kindly
Anglican lay-missionary, who deserves grateful remembrance for
recognizing and temporarily helping merit under the most deceptive
disguise, was obliged much against his inclination to dismiss Francis
and to allow him to fall back into the pit of squalor and vagabondage.

But the few months of reprieve had supplied Thompson with the impulse
to write. Shortly after he was dropped from the McMaster establishment
Mr. Wilfrid Meynell, the editor of _Merry England_, a Catholic
magazine, received the following letter: "_Feb. 23rd, '87_--Dear
Sir,--In enclosing the accompanying article for your inspection, I must
ask pardon for the soiled state of the manuscript. It is due, not to
slovenliness, but to the strange places and circumstances under which
it has been written. For me, no less than Parolles, the dirty nurse
experience has something fouled. I enclose stamped envelope for a
reply, since I do not desire the return of the manuscript, regarding
your judgment of its worthlessness as quite final. I can hardly expect
that where my prose fails my verse will succeed. Nevert