Very soon, however, my financial distress became known, with the result that I was no longer so cordially received as I had been either in Dunchester or in London.

The impecunious cannot expect to remain popular.
At last things came to a climax, and I was driven to the step of resigning my seat.

I was in London at the time, and thence I wrote the letter to the chairman of the Radical committee in Dunchester giving ill-health as the cause of my retirement.

When at length it was finished to my satisfaction, I went out and posted it, and then walked along the embankment as far as Cleopatra's Needle and back again.

It was a melancholy walk, taken, I remember, upon a melancholy November afternoon, on which the dank mist from the river strove for mastery with the gloomy shadows of advancing night.