Love and Mr. Lewisham

longer a youth, but a man, a legal man, at any rate, of one-and-twenty years. Its scene is no longer little W

noon during his first few months in London wandering about Clapham, that arid waste of people, the meeting that he longed for

loyment for the rest of his life, came a marvellous blue document from the Education Department promising inconceivable things. He was to go to London and be paid a guinea a week for listening to lectures--lectures

ience in these latter days.) He carried in his right hand a shiny black bag, well stuffed with text-books, notes, and apparatus for the, forthcoming se

ious carriage. For he no longer felt that universal attention he believed in at eighteen; it was beginning to dawn on him indeed that quite a number of people w

esumes, and had left him property that capitalized at nearly a hundred pounds, a sum which Lewisham hoarded jealously in the Savings Bank, paying only for such essentials as university fees, and the boo

and loose about the button, fretting his neck. But this gloss ..." You would have looked nearer, and finally you would have touched--a charnel-house surface, dank and cool! You see, Madam, the collar was a patent waterproof one. One of those you wash over night with a tooth-brush, and hang on the back of your chair to dry, and there you have it next morning rejuvenesced. It was the only collar he had in the world, it saved threepence

rd's! The rest of him by no means dandiacal, even the vanity of glasses long since abandoned. You would have reflected.... Where

of examinations to a remote Bar and political eminence "in the Liberal interest (D.V.)" He had begun to realise certain aspects of our social order that Whortley did not demonstrate, begun to feel something of the dull stress deepening to absolute wretchedness and pain, which is the colour of so much human life in modern London. One vivid contrast hung in his mind symbolical. On the one hand were the coalies of the Westbourne Park yards, on strike and gaunt and hungry, children begging in the black slush, and st

es; in those days he had still to gauge the possibilities of moral stupidity in himself and his fellow-men. He happened upon "Progress and Poverty" just then, and some casual numbers of the "Commonweal," and it was only too easy to accept the theory of cunning plott

id Lewisham meekly to the

d the young lady at

evening and much of his temper in finding out how to tie this into a neat bow. It was

f stalwart policemen were walking in single file along the Brompton Road. In the opposite direction marched

d by this time the red tie

f the Debating Society, students buying note-books, pencils, rubber, or drawing pins from the privileged stationer. There was a strong representation of new hands, the paying students, youths and young men in black coats and silk hats or tweed suits, the scholar contingent, young

list!" sa

Debating Society notice-board, whereon "G.E. Lewisham on Socialism" was announced for the next Friday, and struggled through the hall to where the Book awaited his signatur

econd last year on the year's work. Frightful mugger. But all these swats have a touch of the beastly prig. Exams--Debating So

rture. The lift was unlit and full of black shadows; only the sapper who conducted it was distin

answered. "I didn't see, I hope