course they can't appreciate us. Confound 'em!"

I think that Hipp has since had but two notions,--the exhibition of that
panorama, or, in the event of its failure, a declaration of war against
the British people. He followed me to Liverpool, and bade me adieu at
Birkenhead, I going Londonward with scarcely enough money to pay my
passage, and he to start next day for Belfast, to lecture upon his own
hook, or, failing (as he afterward did), to recross the Atlantic in the
steerage of a ship.

My feelings, as the train bore me steadily through the Welsh border, by
the clustering smoke-stacks of Birmingham, by the castled tower of
Warwick, and along the head waters of the Thames and Avon, were not of
the most enthusiastic description. I had no money and no friends; I had
sent to America for a remittance, but in the interval of six weeks
required for a reply, must eat and drink and lodge, and London was wide
and pitiless, even if I dared stoop to beg assistance.

Let no young man be tempted to put the sea between his home and himself,
how seductive soever be the experiences of book-makers and poetic
pedestrians. One hour's contemplation of poverty in foreign lands will
line the boy's face with the wrinkles of years, and burn into his soul
that withering dependency which will rankle long after his privations
are forgotten.

In truth, my circumstances were so awkward that my very desperation kept
me calm. I had a formal letter to one English publisher, but not any
friendly line whatever to anybody; and as the possibilities of sickness,
debt, enemies, came to mind, I felt that I was no longer the hero of a
romance, but face to face with a hard, practical, terrible reality. It
was night when I landed at the Paddington Station, and taking an omnibus
for Charing Cross, watched the long lines of lamps on Oxford Street, and
the glitter of the Haymarket theatres, and at last the hard plash of the
fountains in Trafalgar Square, with the stony statues grouped so rigidly
about the column to Nelson.

I walked down Strand with my carpet-bag in my hands, through Fleet
Street and under Temple Bar, till, weary at last from sheer exercise, I
dropped into a little ale-house under a great, grinning lantern, which
said, in the crisp tone of patronage, the one word, "beds." They put me
under the tiles, with the chimney-stacks for my neighbors, and I lay
awake all night meditating expedients for the morrow: so far from regret
or foreboding,