e poor--an
occasional glass of beer or spirits. Often days would go by without
his obtaining any work, and then they would more or less starve. Law
documents are generally given out to such men in the evening, to be
returned finished the next morning. Waking in the night, I would hear
through the thin wooden partition that divided our rooms the even
scratching of his pen.

Thus cheek by jowl we worked, I my side of the screen, he his: youth and
age, hope and realisation.

Out of him my fears fashioned a vision of the future. Past his door I
would slink on tiptoe, dread meeting him upon the stairs. Once had not
he said to himself: "The world's mine oyster?" May not the voices of the
night have proclaimed him also king? Might I not be but an idle dreamer,
mistaking desire for power? Would not the world prove stronger than I?
At such times I would see my life before me: the clerkship at thirty
shillings a week rising by slow instalments, it may be, to one hundred
and fifty a year; the four-roomed house at Brixton; the girl wife,
pretty, perhaps, but sinking so soon into the slatternly woman; the
squalling children. How could I, unaided, expect to raise myself from
the ruck? Was not this the more likely picture?

Our second floor front was a young fellow in the commercial line. Jarman
was Young London personified--blatant yet kind-hearted; aggressively
self-assertive, generous to a fault; cunning, yet at the same time
frank; shrewd, cheery, and full of pluck. "Never say die" was his motto,
and anything less dead it would be difficult to imagine. All day long
he was noisy, and all night long he snored. He woke with a start, bathed
like a porpoise, sang while dressing, roared for his boots, and
whistled during his breakfast. His entrance and exit were always to an
orchestration of banging doors, directions concerning his meals shouted
at the top of his voice as he plunged up or down the stairs, the
clattering and rattling of brooms and pails flying before his feet. His
departure always left behind it the suggestion that the house was now to
let; it came almost as a shock to meet a human being on the landing. He
would have conveyed an atmosphere of bustle to the Egyptian pyramids.

Sometimes carrying his own supper-tray, arranged for two, he would march
into my room. At first, resenting his familiarity, I would hint at my
desire to be alone, would explain that I was busy.

"You fire away, Shakespeare Redivivus," he would