Excerpt from Papers Humorous and Pathetic: Being Selections From the Works of George Augustus Sala; Revised and Abridged by the Author for Public Reading United States, a number of paragraphs in which the circumstances under which the 'key of the Street' was written were related in a more or less absurd manner. Not many of my readers, perhaps, desire any enlighten ment whatever on the subject; but there are always a few people who are anxious to know whether the author of a tale has really been himself the hero of the adventures he describes and whether it was indeed Paul Ferroll who wrote that startling narrative of the killing of Paul Ferroll's wife. For the benefit of such inquisitive souls I will state thus much: that more than one-and-twenty years since, being at the time the landlord of an eligible twelve roomed house, in Wellington Street, Strand, hard by the then office of House/role! Words, I happened one night to be locked out of my own dwelling; and that I did actually walk the streets, shelterless, until next morning, with my receipts for rent and taxes duly paid in my pocket. The documents, unhappily, were not of a nature to be discounted by the 'private gentlemen' or 'retired tradesmen, ' who are always so benevolently ready to assist 'persons in want of temporary accommodation.' Since then I have walked the streets all nights bedless, in times of political or festive stress. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.