t us early, with a portfolio of sketches under
his arm, and his heart full of sanguine expectation, and spent the
day in Fleet Street, or there-abouts, calling on publishers of
illustrated books and periodicals, and came back to us at
dinner-time very fagged, and with a long and piteous but very droll
story of his ignominious non-success: his weary waitings in dull,
dingy, little business back rooms, the patronizing and snubbing he
and his works had met with, the sense that he had everything to
learn--he, who thought he was going to take the publishing world by
storm.

Next day it was just the same, and the day after, and the day after
that--every day of the week he spent under our roof.

Then he insisted on leaving us, and took for himself a room in
Newman Street--a studio by day, a bedroom by night, a pleasant
smoking-room at all hours, and very soon a place of rendezvous for
all sorts and conditions of jolly fellows, old friends and new, from
Guardsmen to young stars of the art world, mostly idle apprentices.

Gradually boxing-gloves crept in, and foils and masks, and the
faithful Snowdrop (whose condition three or four attacks of delirium
tremens during Barty's exile had not improved).

And fellows who sang, and told good stories, and imitated popular
actors--all as it used to be in the good old days of St. James's
Street.

But Barty was changed all the same. These amusements were no longer
the serious business of life for him. In the midst of all the racket
he would sit at his small easel and work. He declared he couldn't
find inspiration in silence and solitude, and, bereft of Martia, he
could not bear to be alone.

Then he looked up other old friends, and left cards and got
invitations to dinners and drums. One of his first visits was to his
old tailor in Jermyn Street, to whom he still owed money, and who
welcomed him with open arms--almost hugged him--and made him two or
three beautiful suits; I believe he would have dressed Barty for
nothing, as a mere advertisement. At all events, he wouldn't hear of
payment "for many years to come! The finest figure in the whole
Household Brigade!--the idea!"

Soon Barty got a few sketches into obscure illustrated papers, and
thought his fortune was made. The first was a little sketch in the
manner of John Leech, which he took to the _British Lion_, just
started as a rival to _Punch_. The _British Lion_ died before the
sketch appeared, but he got a guinea for it, a