CHAPTER XXVIII
If it is impossible to recapture the boyish moods of those early days, it is also difficult not to import into these notes the point of view and feelings that belong to later life. Surely, but gradually, the scale of time changes with the years, and with it the range and quality of the emotions: to-day, a year seems a very brief period; the few months spent in the woods after our Gold Fields fiasco seemed both an eternity, yet far too brief. A faint flavour of childhood's immense scale, when twelve months was an immeasurable stretch of time, still clung to them, perhaps.
But the magnet of New York drew us. Any idea of returning to England until I had made good was far from me. We arrived in the detested city late in October, with livings to earn, and with less money than when we had first come two years before. We took separate rooms this time, for I had learned my lesson about sharing beds and clothes and scanty earnings. It was to be each man for himself. Paxton disappeared immediately; only occasionally did I hear his "Ouch, Ouch!" again; M. found a bed in Harlem and started to teach boxing; I took quarters in East 21st Street, on the top floor of a cheap but cleanish house, and arranged for breakfast and dinner in a neighbouring boarding-house at $2.50 a week.
Two Germans lived in the adjoining attic. Through the thin wooden partition I heard their talk, their breathing, their slightest movement. They rarely came to bed before midnight; they talked the whole night through. Informing them in a loud voice that I understood their language made no difference; they neither stopped nor answered. Yet, oddly enough, I never once saw them; never met them on the stairs, nor in the hall, nor at the front door. They remained invisible, if not inaudible. But I formed vivid pictures of them, and knew from their
