to transfer myself to London. And now began the latter and fiercer stage
of my long sufferings; without using a disproportionate expression I
might say, of my agony. For I now suffered, for upwards of sixteen
weeks, the physical anguish of hunger in. I various degrees of
intensity, but as bitter perhaps as ever any human being can have
suffered who has survived it would not needlessly harass my reader's
feelings by a detail of all that I endured; for extremities such as
these, under any circumstances of heaviest misconduct or guilt, cannot be
contemplated, even in description, without a rueful pity that is painful
to the natural goodness of the human heart. Let it suffice, at least on
this occasion, to say that a few fragments of bread from the breakfast-
table of one individual (who supposed me to be ill, but did not know of
my being in utter want), and these at uncertain intervals, constituted my
whole support. During the former part of my sufferings (that is,
generally in Wales, and always for the first two months in London) I was
houseless, and very seldom slept under a roof. To this constant
exposure to the open air I ascribe it mainly that I did not sink under my
torments. Latterly, however, when colder and more inclement weather came
on, and when, from the length of my sufferings, I had begun to sink into
a more languishing condition, it was no doubt fortunate for me that the
same person to whose breakfast-table I had access, allowed me to sleep in
a large unoccupied house of which he was tenant. Unoccupied I call it,
for there was no household or establishment in it; nor any furniture,
indeed, except a table and a few chairs. But I found, on taking
possession of my new quarters, that the house already contained one
single inmate, a poor friendless child, apparently ten years old; but she
seemed hunger-bitten, and sufferings of that sort often make children
look older than they are. From this forlorn child I learned that she had
slept and lived there alone for some time before I came; and great joy
the poor creature expressed when she found that I was in future to be her
companion through the hours of darkness. The house was large, and, from
the want of furniture, the noise of the rats made a prodigious echoing on
the spacious staircase and hall; and amidst the real fleshly ills of cold
and, I fear, hunger, the forsaken child had found leisure to suffer still
more (it appeared) from the self-created one