took high ground with them; told them how I had created the paper and was even part-proprietor. This last piece of information staggered them. Peter had evidently not thought the circumstance worth mentioning in drawing up a statement of his affairs. After a little conversation, an old gentlman, who seemed to be the chairman, whose kindly face I still recall looking at me with pitying glance, told me that Peter had been bankrupt for considerably more than a year, months before he had taken my ewe lamb of 50l. The deed of our partnership was incomplete, informal, even unstamped, not worth the paper it was written on. And this after my study of the shilling book setting forth the whole law of partnership, and my consultation with Peter on quiet Sabbath evenings when he came home from his preaching!

The old genleman tried to cheer me by congratulating me on this state of things; for, as he said, had I been legally in partnership with Peter, I too must have been sold up. He advised me not to say anything to anyone in Shrewsbury about the deed of partnership, to go away and make the best of a bad job. I am not sure whether this excellent and kindly advice was given before a leading question had drawn from me the admission that I had no more capital at my disposal. I always hope it was.

VI.

PRIVATE SECRETARY.

This was a pretty fair start in life. Within seven months I had made my début on the Press, had climbed to the dizzy height of editorship, then suddenly, as at the moment appeared hopelessly, tumbled down. It was no use complaining, much less folding one's hands and waiting for something good to run up against one. I had a friend in Shrewsbury whose sincerity circumcumstance had already tested. This

was Richard Samuel France, a name well known in the railway world in 1863-5. Son of a farmer, and having inherited the ancestral estates, he raised a little money by selling a portion of them for the purposes of a railway then making its way from Shropshire into North Wales. The contractor came to a difficult point in the construction of the line, stumbled, bungled, and finally broke down. France, who had had no previous training for the work, thought he say how it should be done, boldly took up the dropped contract, and triumphantly completed the line.

It was a period of considerable excitement in the railway and financial world. A powerful London syndicate put their money on France, and he began to make railways right and left. Two of them exist to this day, being known as the Shrewsbury and North Wales, and the Wrexham, Mold, and Connah's Quay lines. France moved to Shrewsbury, purchased a big house and grounds, was elected to the Town Council, pressed to become mayor, might have been member for the Borough if an election had turned up handy. A man of great natural ability, a fluent speaker, a terrible slogger in Town Council debate, with an open hand and a frank, handsome countenance, he was for a while the idol of Shrewsbury. He was attracted by the first series of articles in the "Observer" dealing with local affairs with an absence of circumlocution unfamiliar in the elder Press.

Whilst the authorship of the articles was unsuspected, France, who as a public man knew the chief reporter of the county paper, often spoke to me about them and asked me why the "Chronicle" did not do something like that. When I determined to throw in my lot with Peter, I revealed to France my identity with the anonymous writer. He, in his downright hearty

manner, at once volunteered to lend me any capital that was necessary to establish my co-partnership in the "Observer." He asked me how much I wanted to begin with. I said 501. He was astonished at my moderation, and so indeed was Peter when I related the incident to him. Peter would dearly have liked to get his fat hand into France's capacious purse, and it is clear enough now that knowledge of my friendly relations with the great railway contractor considerably smoothed the advancing stages of our agreement. I accepted the money from France as a loan. When within a couple of years I had earned the money in other fields, I sent it to him and had it promptly returned with a kind and generous note. In later years, when the railway boom was over and France was no longer a wealthy man, I found an opportunity of again pressing it on his acceptance. He was even more resolute, and so to the end of the chapter it was his money that Peter pouched.

France happened to be in London at the very time I confronted Peter's creditors. Next morning I called at his hotel. He was not up, but gave orders for my admission to his bedroom, and there I unfolded my tale.

"It's awkward for you," said he, "but it's the very thing for me. I was just wanting a private secretary. Come along, and your salary commences from to-day at 150l. a year."

Here was a sudden turn of events. I was falling, as it seemed, into abyss of poverty, and here I was, landed on my feet in Eldorado. I had never had 9 Salary of 1501. in my life. This time last year I weltered on a wage of 20s. a week; in August it rose to 30s. Then, it is true, I had within four months reached an income averaging 150l. a year. But it was made up of items, some precarious. It is also true I had been assured a salary of 150l. a year

as

editor of the "Observer." But Peter's habit, already alluded to, of changing the subject when I called for my weekly wage, had a serious tendency towards heaping up arrears. When the bankruptcy bolt fell, Peter was my debtor for many weeks' salary. I was not long in discovering that France's urgent and imperative need for a private secretary was the growth of the moment and was practically imaginative. He had a large staff of clerks, both in London and Shrewsbury, and though he sometimes amused himself and gratified me by dictating a few business letters, my post was a sinecure. Occasionally he took it out of me by reciting long pas sages from Walter Scott. "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" was his idea of the embodiment of the highest form of poetry. It was not mine; but he was so good and kind, and it gave him such pleasure to stream off whole cantos, that I listened with becoming interest. He used to like me to look in at the Hall late at night after the last post had gone, and we talked about books. He smoked a pipe, I a cigarette, and am afraid drank claret with it. I often stayed with him till two o'clock in the morning. I suppose, with the increas ing pressure of his vast business upon his mind, he found recreation in this sort of thing.

As France was frequently in London, leaving me in Shrewsbury, where I had not even the pretence of doing anything for my salary, I suggested that I should go into the office and do some of the clerks' work endeared to me in hide and valonia days. He laughed, assented, and gave me a desk in his private office, where I was understood vaguely to "check accounts." Practically I was master of my own time. I used it to strengthen and widen the foundations of a very useft! business. Even while slaving on the "Observer" I kept up my connection

with the daily papers in London and the large towns in the Midlands and North of England.

At this time Shrewsbury happened to be the cynosure of public eyes, owing to the escapade of a young man who for a while enjoyed world-wide fame under the name of John Morgan. Serving time in Swansea gaol, on being released he made his leisurely way northward. Arrived at Shrewsbury, it occurred to him to represent himself as a detective from Cardiff with a warrant for the apprehension of a certain Mr. Ashworth. Visiting the Raven Hotel, where the best company was likely to be found, the Cardiff detective had the good fortune to find his man. Being arrested, Mr. Ashworth loudly protested he was not the person wanted by the Cardiff police, but was the son of a well-known magistrate in Manchester. John Morgan smiled. He had heard that kind of thing before. The landlord shook his head, and the young gentleman was taken down to the police-office.

John Morgan so arranged the time of his visit to the hotel that the borongh magistrates were sitting. Before them the prisoner was haled, still protesting that he was Mr. Ashworth of Manchester. The experienced Cardiff detective smiled again. The sapient magistrates on the bench almost winked in response to his knowing look, and in accordance with his demand the prisoner was remanded till the next .day.

John Morgan took charge of the prisoner's keys, and, in the ordinary run of his duty, returned to the hotel, carefully examined his portmanteau, and, packing up everything valuable and portable, left town by the next train. An hour later came telegrams from Manchester establishing the identity of Mr. Ashworth, who was forthwith released.

I was in the police-court when John

Morgan brought his victim in, and witnessed the whole proceedings. When the dénouement arrived I put the story into a paragraph, and sent it to as many of the morning papers as trains would reach that night. I had all the field to myself, since there was then neither Press Association nor Central News. The telegraphs were still a private monopoly, little used for coun try news. I had a book of "flimsy," and with this succeeded in communicating with a dozen or more papers. The paragraph duly appeared, and the country rang with delighted laughter. John Morgan became the hero of the day, and every line or scrap about him was eagerly printed. I did my best to satisfy public appetite, and not only made what was to me a small fortune in ready money, but established a footing with the daily Press throughout the country that made me independent of anything else.

This was the more fortunate as the end of my friend France's gallop was close at hand. It was vaguely understood in Shrewsbury that the state of the money market precipitated catas trophe. However it came about, the still unfinished works of his railway were abandoned. The curtain fell over the busy scene in his colossal workshops at Abbeygate. Bills were put up in the windows at the Hall, France withdrew to a little freehold estate he managed to retain in the Montgomeryshire hills. Shrewsbury began to agree that, after all, he was not such a clever fellow as it had thought him, and that some of the townspeople would have done well not to pay him ebsequious court. Out of the wreck of his fortune he further saved a plot of land that yielded rock and lime. This he managed himself and lived pretty comfortably. In later years he came to live in London, and the friendship begun under circumstances so honorable to him was preserved to the last.

VII.

PENNY-A-LINER.

As

When my salary-I cannot say my duties as France's private secretary ceased, I was once more adrift. heretofore temporary disaster led me to discover and improve upon opportunity for bettering my position. I was the recognized Shrewsbury correspoudent of all the principal daily papers far and near, and Shrewsbury began to assume a frequency in the news columns of the daily papers which the ancient town probably regarded with mixed feelings. The scope was naturally limited. In giving birth to the John Morgan episode, Shrewsbury seemed to have exhausted its possibilities. The only thing to do was to go further afield. Accordingly I enlarged my borders till I took in not only the whole of Shropshire, but Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Montgomeryshire, and North Wales.

Governor Eyre's trial in connection with the Jamaica riots, the preliminaries of which fortuitously took place before a bench of Shropshire magistrates, was an opportunity of which I made the most. Hardinge Giffard, afterwards Sir Hardinge, later Lord Halsbury, Lord High Chancellor, was the leading counsel for the defence. He greatly impressed my inexperienced mind by passing from an outbreak of eloquence to a burst of tears as he defended his client. At this day it is curious to think that the great daily papers, including those of London, should have left the reporting of a case like this to a local correspondent. They did, and I reaped a golden harvest out of their confidence. In this case I tried at higher game than ordinary reporting. Deeply impressed with the surroundings of the case, the local coloring of the quiet Shropshire magis. trates' court, above all with Hardinge Giffard bubbling into tears, I wrote a

description of the scene and sent it to the "Daily News," in addition to my ordinary report taken in common by other papers. Special correspondence of the kind which came in with a rush after the Franco-German war was then unknown. My article, which appeared next day in large type, was quite a novel feature, I sharing the feeling of rovelty by receiving a cheque for four guineas. I thought this must be a mistake, or at least intended to cover my ordinary reporting count. That was remitted in full in due time.

ac

Colliery explosions, railway accidents, murders, and trials for murder were carefully attended to. It was, when one comes to think of it, rather ghoulish work. Once a report appeared in the "Times," of an outbreak of cholera in a little town on the borders of Cheshire. There was question whether it really was cholera, and to what extent it prevailed. Going over to inquire, I made the acquaintance of a rosy-cheeked doctor, who obligingly took me round in his gig to see all the worst cases. It was at best a povertystricken town, with the very streets falling away from it, submerged in the salt-mine over which it was built. Now, with cholera stealthily passing up and down its thoroughfares, lurking in its back-yards, it was unspeakably gruesome. The only bright thing in it was the rosy-cheeked doctor who went bustling in and out of the houses as if there was nothing worse going on than measles.

In the quarter we visited there were no knockers to knock or bells to ring. You lifted the latch and walked in, generally on to the stone floor of the kitchen. I remember, as well as if it were yesterday, following the doctor into one of these kitchens and finding an old woman lying back in a big beehive-shaped cane-chair, set by an almost empty firegrate. She was all

alone. The neighbors, she querulously complained, knew she "was bad," and would not come near her.

"Yes, she's bad enough," said the doctor when we left. "She'll be dead in two hours. Did you notice her face was growing blue?"

When I got back to Shrewsbury I did not mention to anyone that I had been investigating cases of cholera. It was a foolish, even a wrong, thing to do. But I was young and enthusiastic when I commenced journalism.

I dwelt in Shrewsbury for five years, on the whole a bright and happy life. I knew everybody, everybody knew me, and most people were uncommonly kind. It came to pass years after that I used to receive letters and Christmas cards from people in Shrewsbury whose names I had forgotten, who talked of times when I lived there. I had a pretty house and garden, agreeable work, sometimes highly paid. In the third or fourth year I did not earn less than 3001. a year, was subject to Do man's rule, dependent on no man's favor, master of my own time. As far as I knew the provincial Press, mine was the most enviable position on it. But the lights of London fascinated me.

I remember the first time I went to London, bent on assisting at the deliberation of Peter's creditors. Night had fallen when the train approached the Metropolis. As we neared the City I leaned out of the window and had a good look at its far-spreading sheet of twinkling lights. It seemed a familiar friend to me. I had no more doubt that some day I would live there a renowned journalist, than if I had al ready rooms and an established position on the staff of a leading paper. It was all very well to live a life of comparative leisure and even luxury. It did not satisfy me, and gradually I arrived at a conclusion which, when

I

formed, seemed the most natural thing in the world. I resolved to give up my connection with the daily Press, my snug 3001. a year, which I had built up out of nothing, my comfortable home, my circle of friends, and go out into the world to seek a new fortune. fancy I had in my mind Oliver Goldsmith's trip across the Continent, fluting for his daily bread, seeing men and things. Wherever the idea came from, my fixed intention was to spend three or four years on the Continent, giving at least a year each to France, Germany, and Italy, acquiring a knowledge of the languages, studying the people, their customs and their history. As I always meant to gain an exceptionally high position in journalism, nothing less than this foundation would satisfy me.

Of course, it meant considerable expenditure of money, and I had not much. Besides, there were others dependent upon me. My father had not yet found a market for his process of preserving cut flowers, and things so turned out that I was the mainstay of the home circle. Whatever happend to me, that weekly contribution must, as long as I lived, be set aside. I had saved about 2001. My furniture I estimated, correctly as is turned out, would bring over 100l., and when my capital was all gone I would have to look out for means of earning more. Anyhow, I was determined to go, and in the early spring of 1869 I bade farewell to Shrewsbury. Before I left I apportioned my engagements amongst my colleagues on the local Press, securing for each man the correspondence of a certain number of papers. It did not seem to do them much good. The 3007. a year melted like snow on the river. When a year later I had opporunity of inquiring how much money was drawn into Shrewsbury from this source, I found it did not reach an aggregate of 201. per annum.