Not less than mine became her desire that I should have my way -
but, ah, the iron seats in that park of horrible repute, and that
bare room at the top of many flights of stairs! While I was away
at college she drained all available libraries for books about
those who go to London to live by the pen, and they all told the
same shuddering tale. London, which she never saw, was to her a
monster that licked up country youths as they stepped from the
train; there were the garrets in which they sat abject, and the
park seats where they passed the night. Those park seats were the
monster's glaring eyes to her, and as I go by them now she is
nearer to me than when I am in any other part of London. I daresay
that when night comes, this Hyde Park which is so gay by day, is
haunted by the ghosts of many mothers, who run, wild-eyed, from
seat to seat, looking for their sons.
But if we could dodge those dreary seats she longed to see me try
my luck, and I sought to exclude them from the picture by drawing
maps of London with Hyde Park left out. London was as strange to
me as to her, but long before I was shot upon it I knew it by maps,
and drew them more accurately than I could draw them now. Many a
time she and I took our jaunt together through the map, and were
most gleeful, popping into telegraph offices to wire my father and
sister that we should not be home till late, winking to my books in
lordly shop-windows, lunching at restaurants (and remembering not
to call it dinner), saying, 'How do?' to Mr.
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