considerable for my age. It was in
fencing that he beat me hollow: he was quite the best fencer I ever
met; the lessons at school of Bonnet's prevot had borne good fruit
in his case.

Then there were squalid dens frequented by touts and betting-men and
medical students, where people sang and fought and laid the odds and
got very drunk--and where Barty's performances as a vocalist, comic
and sentimental (especially the latter), raised enthusiasm that
seems almost incredible among such a brutalized and hardened crew.

One night he and I and a medical student called Ticklets, who had a
fine bass voice, disguised ourselves as paupers, and went singing
for money about Camden Town and Mornington Crescent and Regent's
Park. It took us about an hour to make eighteen pence. Barty played
the guitar, Ticklets the tambourine, and I the bones. Then we went
to the Haymarket, and Barty made five pounds in no time; most of it
in silver donations from unfortunate women--English, of course--who
are among the softest-hearted and most generous creatures in the
world.

"O lachrymarum fons!"

I forget what use we made of the money--a good one, I feel sure.

I am sorry to reveal all this, but Barty wished it. Forty years ago
such things did not seem so horrible as they would now, and the word
"bounder" had not been invented.

* * * * *

My sister Ida, when about fourteen (1853), became a pupil at the
junior school in the Ladies' College, 48 Bedford Square. She soon
made friends--nice young girls, who came to our house, and it was
much the livelier. I used to hear much of them, and knew them well
before I ever saw them--especially Leah Gibson, who lived in
Tavistock Square, and was Ida's special friend; at last I was quite
anxious to see this paragon.

One morning, as I carried Ida's books on her way to school, she
pointed out to me three girls of her own age, or less, who stood
talking together at the gates of the Foundling Hospital. They were
all three very pretty children--quite singularly so--and became
great beauties; one golden-haired, one chestnut-brown, one
blue-black. The black-haired one was the youngest and the tallest--a
fine, straight, bony child of twelve, with a flat back and square
shoulders; she was very well dressed, and had nice brown boots with
brown elastic sides on arched and straight-heeled slender feet, and
white stockings on her long legs--a fashion in hose that has long