with those which I entertain as I write. I have grown older, and, I hope, something kindlier and wiser since then. Yet to this day I cannot blame myself for abandoning my chambers and avoiding my club.
For a temporary asylum I pitched upon a small, quiet, empty, private hotel which I knew of in Charterhouse Square. Instantly the room next mine became occupied.
All the first night I imagined I heard voices talking about me in that room next door. It was becoming a disease with me. Either I was
my armpits; in another moment they had found a more solid resting-place.
It was a hen-coop, and it floated bars upwards like a boat. In this calm it might float for days. I climbed upon the bars-and the whole cage rolled over on top of me.
Coming to the surface, I found to my joy that the hen-coop