lood, and had laughed to scorn the blood of our English aristocracy.
As soon as I mentioned this scandal in English high life, the man
immediately began in his old manner to compare the blood of England
to that of France, and proved to me at once that he had the same
subject for his delight.

After I left him I wandered into the Embankment Gardens, and there I
saw a very ragged man sleeping on a seat. I recognized him at once,
in spite of a great change in appearance. He was the man whom I
met at a superior lodging-house, who hid himself when a celebrated
Duchess was brought there to see the place. He told me, after she had
gone, that he had been valet to the Duke, but that the lady had never
liked him, and had at last succeeded in getting him dismissed. At
that time he looked healthy, clean, and was well dressed, but he did
not want the Duchess to see him in a lodging-house. Suppose she saw
him now, ragged, dirty, and without a house of any kind.

In the same house I knew many other queer characters, whom I often
meet now. There was the man that starved on a small allowance made
by his brother, and knew so much about finance and yet could make no
money. Occasionally he received a few shillings for an article on
finance, but he had hard work to keep body and soul together.

Another strange character was <DW54>. This man had read verses to
every one of the four hundred regular lodgers at the house, and
hardly one stranger that came there for a single night escaped
without hearing him. Seeing that every lodger in the house knew him
for a poet, I had the good sense to confide in no one; for I knew
that the dignity of a poet had suffered for all time, as far as this
house was concerned. <DW54> had written an ode to the man who founded
this class of lodging-house, and had received personal thanks. The
Boer War kept him busy day and night, as it also did many another
poet, but poor <DW54> could not make sixpence for one night's lodging.
He had also written lines on his sister's death, which I am sorry to
say he read to