Chapter IV: ――Circumambient

How to find this number 31? That was the problem. Tom Harry had graduated at Oxford――not Cambridge. This was the error! A Cambridge man would have been able to calculate the probabilities, and obtained a result. Tom Harry had to discover her equation. She was X (an unknown quantity). He was A, but he was also――C (that is minus cash)! The postulate was that A - C + B = X. What was the B in the equation?――probably a book. What book?――decidedly a London directory! He bought one. It is a large book――a heavy one! He could not carry it――yet it was a necessary work of reference. Difficulties must be conquered. Man was made to overcome them! Tom Harry succeeded! He purchased a “single” perambulator――not a “double”――one they double up! The leaves of the directory were doubled down. Therefore the perambulator and the book were in accord! He wheel’d about his book. It was his child!――he had bought it! They allow this in England, where they sell wives at Smithfield! He found his way about. This child was his guide! Is not childhood the very best and purest guide to manhood? and does not manhood only lead us into a second childhood? But among all the numbers “thirty-one,” he had not found her! He was in a fog. She was mist. He was in a London fog! It was dark and thick as Erebus! But he could not see e’er a “bus.” They could not run; nor could he. He had lost Miss Lade――he had now lost himself? He asked a sweeper of crossings where was he? He was told that he was at the corner of the Park of Hyde! It was true.