"If you dislike the work so much why do you remain on the staff?" I asked.
"I do not dislike it. Being by nature a literary Philistine and vagabond journalist, I love the work. Anyhow, there is nothing else which I can do. If I happened to be placed on a square acre of earth fresh from the hands of the Creator, and given a spade and shovel to work with, what use could I make of those tools of labour? I could not earn my living with a spade and shovel. It was for the like of us that London and journalism were created."
For a while I was very much out of my place at my quarters in Bloomsbury, for it was in that locality that I obtained rooms along with Barwell. Everything in the place was a fresh experience to me; at the dinner-table I did not know the names of the dishes. The table napkins were problems which were new to me, and the frilled and collared maid-servant was a phenomena, disconcerting and unavoidable.
I who had cooked my own chops for the best part of seven years, I who had dined in moleskin and rags for such a long while, felt the handicap of dining inside four walls, hemmed with restraint, and almost choked with the horrible starched abomination which decency decreed that I should wear around my neck. It was very wearisome. Barwell was utterly careless and outraged custom with impunity, but I, who feared to do the wrong thing, always remained on the tenter-hooks of suspense. Barwell knew what should be done and seldom did it, while I, who was only learning the very rudimentary affectations of civilised society, took care to follow out the most stringent commands of etiquette whenever I became aware of those commands.
At the office of the _Dawn_ I was reticent and backward. I lacked the cleverness, the smartness and readiness of expression with which other members of the staff were gifted. I had come into a new world, utterly foreign to me, and often I longed to be back again with Moleskin Joe on some long road leading to nowhere.
For a while my stories were not successful, although I made a point of seeing the things of which I wrote. I came back to the office every evening full of my subject, whether a florist's exhibition, a cat show, or a police court case, and sat down seriously to write my story. When half-written I tore it up seriously and began again. When satisfied with the whole completed account I took it to the sub-editor, who read it seriously and seriously threw it into the waste-paper basket. At the end of the first week I found that only two articles of mine had appeared in the _Dawn_. I had written eight.