se_ of policemen who
passed along the alley on their way to relieve guard; their heavy feet
sometimes sounded on the grating above my window.

I recall a tragi-comical incident of life at the British Museum. Once,
on going down into the lavatory to wash my hands, I became aware of a
notice newly set up above the row of basins. It ran somehow thus:
"Readers are requested to bear in mind that these basins are to be used
only for casual ablutions." Oh, the significance of that inscription!
Had I not myself, more than once, been glad to use this soap and water
more largely than the sense of the authorities contemplated? And there
were poor fellows working under the great dome whose need, in this
respect, was greater than mine. I laughed heartily at the notice, but it
meant so much.

Some of my abodes I have utterly forgotten; for one reason or another, I
was always moving--an easy matter when all my possessions lay in one
small trunk. Sometimes the people of the house were intolerable. In
those days I was not fastidious, and I seldom had any but the slightest
intercourse with those who dwelt under the same roof, yet it happened now
and then that I was driven away by human proximity which passed my
endurance. In other cases I had to flee from pestilential conditions.
How I escaped mortal illness in some of those places (miserably fed as I
always was, and always over-working myself) is a great mystery. The
worst that befell me was a slight attack of diphtheria--traceable, I
imagine, to the existence of a dust-bin _under the staircase_. When I
spoke of the matter to my landlady, she was at first astonished, then
wrathful, and my departure was expedited with many insults.

On the whole, however, I had nothing much to complain of except my
poverty. You cannot expect great comfort in London for four-and-sixpence
a week--the most I ever could pay for a "furnished room with attendance"
in those days of pretty stern apprenticeship. And I was easily
satisfied; I wanted only a little