endoes and allusions of implied experience or culture--all the
give-and-take of happily contending minds--all, indeed, that makes true
conversation--is a science utterly unknown to him. A certain
superficial nimbleness of mind he does sometimes possess, but for all
that he is a dull creature, made dull by the limitations of his life.

If it should happen, as it often may, that such a man has some genuine
instinct for friendship, and has a friend to whom he can confide his
real thoughts, the chances are that his friend will be separated from
him by the mere vastness of London. To the rural mind the metropolis
appears an entity; in reality it is an empire. A journey from the
extreme north to the extreme south, from Muswell Hill to Dulwich, is
less easily accomplished, and often less speedily, than a journey from
London to Birmingham. There is none of that pleasant 'dropping-in' for
an evening which is possible in country towns of not immoderate radius.
Time-tables have to be consulted, engagement-books scanned, serious
preparations made, with the poor result, perhaps, of two hours' hurried
intercourse. The heartiest friendship does not long survive this
malignity of circumstance. It is something to know that you have a
friend, obscurely hidden in some corner of the metropolis; but you see
him so rarely, that when you meet, it is like forming a new friendship
rather than pursuing an old one. It is little wonder that, under such
conditions, visits grow more and more infrequent, and at last cease. A
message at Christmas, an intimation of a birth, a funeral card, are the
solitary relics and mementoes of many a city friendship not extinct,
but utterly suspended.

I dwell on these obvious characteristics of London life, because in
course of time they assumed for me almost terrifying dimensions. After
ten years of arduous toil I found myself at thirty-five lonely,
friendless, and imprisoned in a groove of iron, whose long curves swept
on inevitably to that grim terminus where all men arrive at last.
Sometimes I chided myself for my discontent; and certainly there were
many who might have envied me. I occupied a fairly comfortable house
in a decayed terrace where each house was exactly like its neighbour,
and had I told any one that the mere aspect of this grey terrace
oppressed me by its featureless monotony, I should have been laughed at
for my pains. I believe that I was trusted by my employers, and if a
mere autom