end of
this phase.

Those last years of the young man, the author and journalist of
'promise,' who was a 'coming man,' and, too, the maturer years which
followed, ought, upon all material counts, to have been the happiest
and most contented in my life; since, during this time, my position
was an assured one, and I went scatheless as regards anxiety about
ways and means--the burden which lines the foreheads of eight
Londoners in ten, I think. Yes, by all the signs, these should have
been my best and most contented years. As a fact, I do not think I
touched content in a single hour of all that period.

What then was lacking in my life? It certainly lacked leisure. But the
average modern man would say that this commonplace fact could hardly
rob one of content. My income did not fall below from seven hundred to
a thousand pounds in any year. In all this period, therefore, there
was never a hint of the bitter, wolfish struggle for mere food and
shelter which ruled my first years in London; neither was I ever
obliged to live in squalid quarters. On the contrary, I lived
comfortably, and had a good deal more of the sort of social
intercourse which dining out furnishes than I desired. And, withal,
though I knew much of keen effort, the stress of unremitting work,
and, at times, considerable responsibility, I do not think I tasted
content in one hour of all those long, crowded, respectable, and
apparently prosperous years.

If one comes to that, could I honestly assert that in the years
preceding these I had ever known content? I fear not. Elation, the
sense of more or less successful striving, occasional triumphs--all
these good things I had known. But content, peace, secure and restful
satisfaction-- No, I could not truly say I had ever experienced these.
Perhaps they have been rare among all the educated peoples of the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; particularly, it may be,
among those who, like myself, have been more or less freely admitted
prospectors in the home territories of various classes of the
community, without ever becoming a fully accredited and recognised
member of any one among them.

I would like very much to comprehend fairly the reason of the
barrenness, the failure to attain content or satisfaction, in all
those years of my London life. And, for that reason, I linger over my
review of them, I state the case as fully as I can. But do I explain
it to myself? I fear not. Doubtless, some go