A person in search of adventure might join a Polar expedition, arrange an aerial flight round the world or found a newspaper entirely dedicated to truth-telling. These adventures are of the more spectacular and expensive kind, and only within the reach of the favoured few. A cheaper way of satisfying the thirst for adventure is to empty your pockets of all your money, dress in the oldest and shabbiest clothes you can find, and make yourself a tramp. This is what Mrs. Cecil Chesterton did—not exactly for the fun of the thing, not in search of romance and adventure, but to study destitution, and to prove to herself that a woman without status and that recommendation which is called a ‘character’ or a ‘reference’ cannot obtain employment in any recognised craft or calling.

We have heard of these amateur explorers into the underworld before. Are they not, we ask ourselves, mere spectators, in, though not of the surroundings they have themselves freely chosen? They go among the outcasts to record facts and register impressions, but they are only onlookers and not outcasts themselves. If any of these thoughts arise with regard to Mrs. Chesterton’s personal experiment, her book, In Darkest London, will dispel them. She says : ‘I left my home one evening in February. I wore my own clothes, which were shabby but not ragged. I had watertight shoes and a raincoat—and not a penny in my pocket. I had determined to start life from an entirely new angle.