el and engage a room. Even at railroad terminals, where the
refreshment-rooms were just beginning to be swept and garnished, and
the waitresses were yawning behind the big urns, they did not regard
the famished traveller with any enthusiasm. It was felt that a
stranger wanting food at that hour had been up to no good. The author,
being a skilled Londoner, was put to no such inconvenience. It was his
habit, at intervals, to write special articles for the London papers,
articles which had to be delivered to the night commissionaire on duty
in the office of the newspaper. The particular functionary employed by
the _News_ was a social being and fond of port, and over a dock-glass
at Finches, the celebrated bar in Fleet Street, had recommended a
certain chop-house where night-birds ate before retiring to their
nests in distant suburbs. To this hostelry the author therefore
repairs, down the narrow declivity, in at the door whose brass handles
are being vigorously polished by a youth in a green baize apron, and
upstairs to a long low chamber furnished with small tables. Here one
discovers some half-dozen strays from the millions of Londoners who
breakfast in orthodox fashion--in the secrecy and sullen silence of
their own homes. And the salient feature of the people in this
upstairs room is the inexorable isolation of their souls. No one
speaks. One or two look up from their food as the author makes his way
to the window from which he commands a glimpse of blue sky, the
elevation of an enormous brick wall, and possibly a locomotive having
its firebox cleaned on a siding and panting as though afflicted with
lung trouble. He takes his seat not far from a young woman who is
breakfasting on a bun and a glass of milk. She is reading a book, a
fat novel in fine print, the covers soiled with food and the corners
grimy with years of friction. She is there every morning eating a bun
and drinking a glass of milk. She has a clear, delicate face, blonde
hair, and large black eyes. Her hands are fine, too, though they might
be better kept. One suspects she does her own washing after she gets
home at night.

The reader may possibly wonder why the author should lower himself in
the esteem of men by dilating upon the appearance of a stray young
woman whom fate had washed up on the shores of time near him and whom
the next wave would inevitably bear away again. But the reader must
exercise a little patience. Several women appear in this prefa