and back. But do not ask them about
Siberia, nor question how they got back. There are some things too
disgusting even to talk about. Siberia is not exciting; it is filthy.
But you may sit among them, the men and the dark, gazelle-eyed girls;
and you may take caviare, tea-and-lemon, and black bread; and
conversation will bring you a proffered cigarette.

It was in these streets that I first met that giant of letters, Mr. W.
G. Waters, better known to the newspaper public as "Spring Onions," but
unfortunately I did not meet him in his gay days, but in his second
period, his regeneracy. He was introduced to me as a fearsome rival in
the subtle art of Poesy. I stood him a cup of cocoa--for you know, if
you read your newspaper, that Spring was a teetotaller. He signed the
pledge, at the request of Sir John Dickinson, then magistrate at Thames
Police Court, in 1898, and it was his proud boast that he had kept it
ever since. He was then seventy-nine. His father died of drink at
thirty-seven, and Dean Farrar once told Spring that his case was
excusable, since it was hereditary. But, although Spring went to prison
at the age of thirteen for drunkenness, and has "been in" thirty-nine
times, he didn't die at thirty-seven. I wonder what the moral is? His
happiest days, he assured me, were spent in old Clerkenwell Prison, now
Clerkenwell Post Office, and on one occasion, as he was the only
prisoner who could read, he was permitted to entertain his companions by
extracts from _Good Words_, without much effect, he added, as most of
them are in and out even now. One important factor in the making of his
grand resolution was that a girl he knew in Stepney, who was so far gone
that even the Court missionary had given her up, came to him one
Christmastime. She was in the depths of misery and hunger.

"Spring," she said, "give me a job!"

So Spring gave her the job of cleaning out his one room, for which she
was to receive half a crown. She obeyed him; and when he returned, and
looked under the floor where he stored his savings from the sale of his
poems (nearly seven pounds) they also had been cleaned.

That settled it. Spring decided to cut all his acquaintances, but he
could only do that successfully by some very public step. So he went to
Sir John Dickinson and signed the pledge in his presence. Said he--

"And now, I find that after fifteen years of teetotalism, I write better
poetry. Every time I feel I want a drink, I say to my