m here, shall I not?' I asked with some
anxiety.

'A room? Oh, surely, surely. Yes, yes, that's all right. Ask for me.
Come and see me before doing anything, and I'll see to it. So glad
we've fixed it. Good-bye!'

And so, very affably, I was bowed out of my free-lance life, the which
I had entered by way of the north-eastern slums.

XII

My first Monday in the _Advocate_ office was not a pleasant day.
Arriving there about ten o'clock in the morning, I learned that the
editor was never expected before three in the afternoon. I knew no
other person in the building, and so no place was open to me except
the waiting-room. However, I whiled away the morning in that apartment
by making a pretty thorough study of a file of the _Advocate_, in the
course of which I took notes and made memoranda of suggestions which
would have kept an editor busy for a week or two had he acted upon one
half of them.

The time thus spent was far from wasted, since it gave me more of an
insight into current politics (as reflected in the pages of this
particular organ) than I had obtained during my whole life in England
up till then, and it gave me a thorough grasp of the policy of the
_Advocate_. After a somewhat Barmecidal feast in a Fleet Street
eating-house (domestic expenditure left me very short of funds at this
time), I returned to my post and wrote a political leading article
which I ventured to think at least the equal in persuasive force and
profundity of anything I had read that morning. At three o'clock
precisely, my name, written on a slip of paper, was placed on the
editorial table. There were then nine other people in the waiting-room.
At four I began a second leading article, which was finished at
half-past five. At a quarter to six the manuscript of both effusions
was sent in to the editor. At a quarter to seven inquiry elicited the
information that the editor had left the building almost an hour
since, with Sir William Bartram, after a crowded afternoon which had
brought disappointment to many beside myself who had wished to see
him.

Unused as I was now to salary earning I felt uneasy. It seemed to me
rather dreadful that any institution should be mulcted to the extent
of a guinea in the day, by way of payment to a man who spent that day
in a waiting-room. I looked anxiously for my leading articles next
morning. But, no; the editorial space was occupied by other (much less
edifying) contributions upon topics which had