"But, to talk about something else, your aunt, Mrs. Tipping, who has a great idea of my literary importance, has a notion that I may be of some help to you, Mr. Mesurier. Well, I'll tell you the whole extent of my present literary engagements, and you are perfectly at liberty to laugh. At the present time I do the sporting notes for the Tyrian Daily Mail, and I write the theological reviews for The Fleet Street Review. These apparently incongruous occupations are the relics of an old taste for sport, which as a boy in the country I had ample opportunity for indulging, and of an interrupted training for the Church--'twixt then and now there is an eventful gap which, if you don't mind, we won't sadden each other by filling--Let us fill our glasses and our pipes instead; and, having failed so entirely myself, I will give you minute directions how to succeed in literature."
Mr. Gerard's discourse on how to succeed in literature was partly practical and partly ironical, and probably too technical to interest the general reader, who has no intention of being a great or a little writer, and who perhaps has already found Mr. Gerard's previous discourse a little too special in its character. Suffice it that Henry heard much to remember, and much to laugh over, and that Mr. Gerard concluded with a practical offer of kindness.
"I don't know how much use it may be to you," he said; "but if you care to have it, I should be very glad to give you a letter to the editor of The Fleet Street Review. He has, I think, a certain regard for me, and he might send you a book to do now and again. At all events, it would be something."
Henry embraced the offer gratefully; and it occurred to him that in a day or two's time there was a five days' excursion running from Tyre to London and back, for half-a-guinea. Why not take it, and expend his last five pounds in a stimulating glimpse of the city he some day hoped to conquer? He could then see his friend the publisher, present his letter to the editor, and perhaps bring home with him some little work and a renewed stock of hopes.
So, before they parted that night, Mr. Gerard wrote him the letter.
CHAPTER XXXIII
"THIS IS LONDON, THIS IS LIFE"
Thus it was that, all unexpectedly, Henry found himself set down one autumn morning at the homeless hour of a quarter-to-seven, in Euston station. He was going to stay in some street off the Strand, and chartered a hansom to take him there. Few great cities are impressive in the neighbourhood of their railway termini. You enter them, so to speak, by the back door; and London waves no banners of bright welcome to the stranger who first enters it by the Euston Road.
But there was an interesting church presently, and on a dust-cart close by Henry read "Vestry of St. Pancras."