This, the most move of my life, as I think, was made on a Monday in the autumn of about 1890. The year doesn't matter anyhow. I know that it was about sixteen or seventeen years ago, or when I was thirty-three or thirty-four years of age. That Monday I had taken leave from the Office, the day being from my allowed twenty-eight days of summer vacation, as was customary with us. By favour of the authorities we were even allowed to take half days of leave, which prevented us from doing what we believed our happier brethren in the pukka Civil Service could always do, ask to step out after lunch and not come back that day. It also I suppose preserved as much of our self-respect as was possible, for we were thus able to say that we at anyrate did not rob our masters the public of any of our valuable time.  
This reserve of time, however, was far too valuable commercially to me to be lightly upon, and so, rising at five the next day, I did as much as possible towards getting straight before eight, when I started[Pg 110] to walk to the Office, a little over four miles, but with the of a long day's rest, as far as my body was concerned, in front of me. That week was one of the busiest in my whole life. My office work had to suffer, doubtless, for amid the dancing columns of figures or snaky automatic curves I could always discern the counters, shelves, showcases, etc., of this new daemon, the shop. Moreover, I had to interview people, in art , crewels, etc., dealers in fancy goods, dealers in mouldings, etc., and open accounts upon the strength of that little capital, now fast away.
 
My education was rapid that week. I heard hundreds of new trade terms, of the existence of articles for sale of which I never before dreamed, of possibilities of profit making that were dazzling, and I remembered them all. But I kept no account of my growing liabilities, loading my memory with everything, and whenever an uneasy feeling persisted in making itself noticed that I was far beyond my resources, I fell back upon the consoling hope that I should soon square everything when the shop was opened. And I had to open that shop on the following Saturday. I ordered a couple of thousand hand-bills advising the resident of Slopers Island, as East Dulwich was then called, that F. T. Bullen proposed opening the at 135 Lordship Lane, S.E., o............