Cruel Barbara Allen by David Christie Murray

We who live in London know well enough that its streets are not paved with gold. If one had asked Christopher his opinion on that point, he would no doubt have laughed at the childishness of the question, yet he came up to London with all the confidence and certainty which the old childish belief could have inspired. He was coming to make his fortune. That went without saying. He was brim-full of belief in himself, to begin with. ‘The world's mine oyster,' he thought, as the cheap parliamentary train crawled from station to station. The world is _my_ oyster, for that matter, but the edible mollusc is hidden, and the shell is uninviting. Christopher found the mollusc very shy, the shell innutritive.

Publishers did not leap at the organ fugue in C as they ought to have done. They skipped not in answer to the adagio movement in the May-day Symphony. The oratorio conjured no money from their pockets--for the most part, they declined to open the wrapper which surrounded it, or to see it opened. Poor Christopher, in short, experienced all the scorn which patient merit of the unworthy takes, and found his own appreciation of himself of little help to him. His money melted--as money has a knack of melting when one would least wish to see it melt. Oxford Street became to him as stony-hearted a step-mother as it was to De Quincey, and at melancholy last--while his letters to Barbara became shorter and fewer--he found an enforced way to the pawnbroker's, whither went all which his Uncle's capacious maw would receive; all, except the beloved violin which had so often sung to Barbara, so often sounded Love's sweet lullaby in the quiet of his own chamber. _That_ he could not part with, for he was a true enthusiast when all was told. So he went about hungry for a day or two.