recounted at a length and with a boisterous vim which outdid even Bill Blake’s effort in the London Daily Sun.  Bill Blake had been handicapped by consideration of space and the fact that he had turned in his copy at an advanced hour when the paper was almost made up.  The present writer was shackled by no restrictions.  He had plenty of room to spread himself in, and he had spread himself.  So liberal had been the editor’s views in the respect that, in addition to the letter-press, the pages contained an unspeakably offensive picture of a burly young man in an obviously advanced condition of alcoholism raising his fist to strike a monocled youth in evening dress who had so little chin that Jimmy was surprised that he had ever been able to hit it.  The only gleam of consolation that he could discover in this repellent drawing was the fact that the artist had treated Lord Percy even more scurvily than himself.  Among other things, the second son of the Duke of Devizes was depicted as wearing a coronet—­a thing which would have excited remark even in a London night-club.

Jimmy read the thing through in its entirety three times before he appreciated a nuance which his disordered mind had at first failed to grasp—­to wit, that this character-sketch of himself was no mere isolated outburst but apparently one of a series.  In several places the writer alluded unmistakeably to other theses on the same subject.

Jimmy’s breakfast congealed on its tray, untouched.  That boon which the gods so seldom bestow, of seeing ourselves as others see us, had been accorded to him in full measure.  By the time he had completed his third reading he was regarding himself in a purely objective fashion not unlike the attitude of a naturalist towards some strange and loathesome manifestation of insect life.  So this was the sort of fellow he was!  He wondered they had let him in at a reputable hotel.

The rest of the day he passed in a state of such humility that he could have wept when the waiters were civil to him.  On the Monday morning he made his way to Park Row to read the files of the Chronicle—­a morbid enterprise, akin to the eccentric behaviour of those priests of Baal who gashed themselves with knives or of authors who subscribe to press-clipping agencies.

He came upon another of the articles almost at once, in an issue not a month old.  Then there was a gap of several weeks, and hope revived that things might not be as bad as he had feared—­only to be crushed by another trenchant screed.  After that he set about his excavations methodically, resolved to know the worst.  He knew it in just under two hours.  There it all was—­his row with the bookie, his bad behaviour at the political meeting, his breach-of-promise case.  It was a complete biography.

And the name they called him.  Piccadilly Jim!  Ugh!

He went out into Park Row, and sought a quiet doorway where he could brood upon these matters.