Christopher Crayon's Recollections. The Life and Times of the late James Ewing Ritchie as told by himself

London was badly off for illuminati fifty years ago. The only pulpit effectually filled was that of South Place, Finsbury, where W. Johnson Fox, the celebrated orator and critic, lectured. He had been trained to be an orthodox divine at Homerton. One day he said to me, “The students always get very orthodox as they get to the end of their collegiate career, and are preparing to settle, as the phrase is.” Fox, it seems, was the exception that proves the rule. He was eloquent and attractive as preacher and lecturer. Dickens and Macready and Foster were, I believe, among his hearers. At any rate, he had a large following, and died an M.P. Lectures on all things sacred and profane were unknown in London fifty years ago. I once heard Robert Dale Owen somewhere at the back of Tottenham Court Road Chapel, but he was a weariness of the flesh, and I never went near him again. The provinces occasionally sent us popular orators; one was Raffles, of Liverpool, a man who looked as if the world had used him well. I well remember how he dealt in such alliteration as “the dewdrop glittering in the glen.” Then there was Parsons of York, with his amazing rhetoric, all whispered with a thrill that went to every heart, as he preached in Surrey Chapel, where also I heard Jay of Bath, who, however, left on me no impression other than he was a wonderful old man for his years. Sherman, the regular preacher there, was a great favourite with the ladies – almost as much as Dr. Cumming, a dark, scholarly-looking man, who held forth in a court just opposite Drury Lane Theatre, and whose prophetic utterances obtained for him a popularity he would otherwise have sought in vain. It makes one feel old to write of these good men who have long since passed away, not, however, unregretted, or without failing to leave behind them

Footprints on the sands of Time.

When I first became familiar with the Dissenting world of London the most bustling man in it was the Rev. Dr. John Campbell, who preached in what was then a most melancholy pile of buildings known as the Tottenham Court Road Chapel, the pulpit of which had been at one time occupied by the celebrated George Whitfield. In or about 1831 Dr. Campbell became the minister, and at the same time found leisure to write in The Patriot newspaper; to fight and beat the trustees of the Tottenham Court Road, who had allowed the affairs of the chapel to get into a most disorderly state; to make speeches at public meetings; to write in a monthly that has long ceased to exist —The Eclectic Review– a review to which I had occasionally the honour of contributing when it was edited by Dr. Price; – and to publish a good many books which had a fair sale in his day. Dr. Campbell had also much to do with the abolition of the Bible printing monopoly – a movement originated by Dr. Adam Thomson, of Coldstream, powerfully supported by one of my earliest friends, Mr. John Childs, a spirited and successful printer at Bungay, whose one-volume editions of standard authors, such as Bacon’s works, Milton’s, and Gibbon’s “Decline and Pall of the Roman Empire,” are still to be seen on the shelves of second-hand booksellers. The Queen’s Printer affected to believe that the Bible could not be supplied to the public with equal efficiency or cheapness on any other system than that which gave him the monopoly of printing, but as it was proved before a Committee of the House of Commons that the Book could be printed at much less cost and in every way equal to the copies then in existence, the monopoly was destroyed.

In 1830 there came into existence the Congregational Union of England and Wales, of which Dr. Campbell became one of the leading men. He was at the same time editor of The Christian Witness and The Christian’s Penny Magazine– the organs of the Union – both of which at that time secured what was then considered a very enormous sale. When in 1835 Mr. Nasmith came to London to establish his City Mission Dr. Campbell was one of his earliest supporters and friends. The next great work which he took in hand was the establishment of The British Banner, a religious paper for the masses, in answer to an appeal made to him by the committee of The Patriot newspaper. The first number of the new journal appeared in 1848, and gained a circulation hitherto unknown in a weekly paper, and this in time was succeeded by The British Standard. As time passed on Dr. Campbell became less popular. He had rather too keen a scent for what was termed neology. In one case his zeal involved him in a libel suit and the verdict was for the plaintiff, who was awarded by the jury forty shillings damages instead of the £5,000 he had claimed. In the Rivulet Controversy, as it was termed, Dr. Campbell was not quite so successful. Mr. Lynch was a poet, and preached, as his health was bad, to a small but select congregation in the Hampstead Road. He published a volume of refined and thoughtful poetry which has many admirers to this day. The late Mr. James Grant – a Scotch baker who had taken to literature and written several remarkably trashy books, the most popular of which was “Random Recollections of the House of Commons,” – at that time editor of the publican’s paper, The Morning Advertiser, in his paper described the work of Mr. Lynch as calculated to inspire pain and sadness in the minds of all who knew what real religion was. Against this view a powerful protest was made by many leading men of the body to which Mr. Lynch belonged. At this stage of the controversy Dr. Campbell struck in by publishing letters addressed to the principal professors of the Independent and Baptist colleges of England, showing that the hymns of Mr. Lynch were very defective as regards Evangelical truth – containing less of it than the hymns ordinarily sung by the Unitarians. The excitement in Dissenting circles was intense. The celebrated Thomas Binney, of the King’s Weigh House Chapel, took part with Mr. Lynch and complained of Dr. Campbell in the ensuing meetings of the Congregational Union, and so strong was the feeling on the subject that a large party was formed to request the Congregational Union formally to sever their official connexion with Dr. Campbell – a matter not quite so easy as had been anticipated. One result, however, was that Dr. Campbell gave up the editing of The British Banner and established The British Standard to take its place, in which the warfare against what is called Neology was carried on with accelerated zeal. In 1867 the Doctor’s laborious career came to an end happily in comfort and at peace with all. His biographers assure the reader that Dr. Campbell’s works will last till the final conflagration of the world. Alas! no one reads them now.

To come to later times, of course my most vivid recollections are those connected with the late Mr. Spurgeon. In that region of the metropolis known as “over the water” the Baptists flourish as they do nowhere else, and some of their chapels have an interesting history. Amongst many of them rather what is called high doctrine is tolerated – not to say admired. They are the elect of God, preordained before the world was formed to enjoy an existence of beatific rapture, that shall continue when the world has passed away. Of one of the most popular preachers in that locality, the late Jemmy Wells, it is said that when told that one of his hearers had fallen out of a cart and broken his leg his reply was, “Oh, what a blessed thing it is he can’t fall out of the Covenant.” When one of the chapels in that locality was at low-water mark, there came to it the Rev. Charles Haddon Spurgeon – then little more than a boy, but already famous in East Anglia as a boy preacher – and never had a preacher a more successful career. There was no place in London that was large enough to contain the audiences that flocked to hear him. I first heard him at the Surrey Music Hall, and it was wonderful to see what hordes came there of saints and sinners, lords and ladies, City magnates and county squires, Anonymas from St. John’s Wood, Lady Clara Vere de Veres from Belgravia. It was the fashion to go there on a Sunday morning, just as it was the fashion a generation previously to rush to Hatton Garden to hear Edward Irving. The hall was handsome and light and airy, free from the somewhat oppressive air of Cave Adullam and Little Bethel, and there upon the platform which did duty for a pulpit stood a young man short of stature, broadly built, of a genial though not handsome countenance, with a big head and a voice it was a treat to listen to and audible in every part of that enormous building. What was the secret of his success? He was bold, he was original, he was humorous, and he was in earnest. He said things to make his hearers laugh, and what he said or did was magnified by rumour. Old stories of Billy Dawson and Rowland Hill were placed to Mr. Spurgeon’s credit. The caricaturists made him their butt. There was no picture more commonly displayed at that time than one entitled “Brimstone and Treacle” – the former representing Mr. Spurgeon, the latter Mr. Bellew, then a star of the first order in many an Episcopalian pulpit. Bellew soon ran through his ephemeral popularity – that of Mr. Spurgeon grew and strengthened day by day. Do you, like the late Sir James Graham, want to know the reason why? The answer is soon given. “I am going into the ministry,” said a youthful student to an old divine. “Ah, but, my dear friend, is the ministry in you?” Well, the ministry was in Mr. Spurgeon as it rarely is in any man; hence his unparalleled success.

One little anecdote will illustrate this. I have a friend whose father had a large business in the ancient city of Colchester. Mr. Spurgeon’s father was at one time in his employ. Naturally, he said a good deal of the preaching talent of his gifted son, and of the intention beginning to be entertained in the family circle of making a minister of him. The employer in question was a Churchman, but he himself offered to help Mr. Spurgeon in securing for his son the benefits of a collegiate education. The son’s reply was characteristic. He declined the offered aid, adding the remark that “ministers were made not in colleges but in heaven.”

In connection with Mr. Spurgeon’s scholastic career let me knock a little fiction on the head. There is a house in Aldeburgh, in Suffolk, famous now as the birthplace of Mrs. Garrett Anderson and her gifted sisters, which at one time was a school kept by a Mr. Swindell, and they told me at Aldeburgh this last summer that Mr. Spurgeon was a pupil there. This is not so. It is true Mr. Spurgeon was a pupil at Mr. Swindell’s, but it was at Newmarket, to which the latter had moved from Aldeburgh.

One or two Spurgeon anecdotes which have not yet appeared in print may be acceptable. At Hastings there are, or were, many High Church curates. A few years ago one of them did a very sensible thing. He had a holiday; he was in town and he went to the Tabernacle, getting a seat exactly under Mr. Spurgeon’s nose, as it were. It seems that during the week Mr. Spurgeon had been attending a High Church service, of which he gave in the pulpit a somewhat ludicrous account, suddenly finishing by giving a sort of snort, and exclaiming, “Methinks I smell ’em now,” much to the delight of the curate sitting underneath. Referring to Mr. Spurgeon’s nose, I am told he had a great admiration of that of his brother, a much more aristocratic-looking article that his own. “Jem,” he is reported to have said on one occasion, “I wish I had got your nose.” “Do you?” was the reply; “I wish I had got your cheek.” Let me give another story. On one occasion an artist wanted to make a sketch of Mr. Spurgeon for publishing. “What are you going to charge?” asked the preacher, as the artist appeared before him. “You must not make the price more than twopence; the public will give that for me – not a penny more. A photographer published a portrait of me at eighteenpence, and no one bought it.” This conversation took place on the occasion of a week-night service. At the close of the service the artist came up into the vestry to show his sketch. “Yes,” said Mr. Spurgeon, “it is all very well, but I should like to hear what others say about it. They say women and fools are the best judges of this kind of thing,” and accordingly the likeness was referred to a friend who happened to come into the room in the nick of time.

It always seemed to me the great characteristic of Mr. Spurgeon was good-natured jollity. He was as full of fun as a boy. I saw him once before getting into a wagonette pitch all the rugs on his brother’s head, who naturally returned the compliment – much to the amusement of the spectators. On one occasion I happened to be in the Tabernacle when the Baptist Union dined there, as it always did at the time of the Baptist anniversaries. I suppose there would be many hundreds present who enjoyed the ample repast and the accompanying claret and sherry. After the dinner was over Mr. Spurgeon came up to where I was sitting and, laying his hand on my shoulder and pointing to the long rows of empty bottles left standing on the table, with a twinkle in his eye, said, “Teetotalism does not seem to flourish among the brethren, does it?” And he was as kind as he was cheerful. Once and once only I had to write to him. He returned me a reply addressed to me in my proper name, and then – as I was writing weekly articles under a nom de plume in a highly popular journal – added, in a postscript, “Kind regards to – ” (mentioning my nom de plume). The anecdote is trivial, but it shows how genial and kind-hearted he was.

And to the last what crowds attended his ministry at the Tabernacle! One Saturday I went to dine with a friend living on Clapham Common. Going back to town early in the morning I got into an omnibus, and was amused by hearing the conductor exclaim, “Any more for the Tabernacle!” “Now, then, for the Tabernacle!” “This way for the Tabernacle!” and, sure enough, I found all my fellow-passengers got out when we arrived at the Tabernacle; nor was the ’bus in which I was riding the only one thus utilised. There was no end of omnibuses from all quarters drawing up at the entrance. According to the latest utterance of Mr. Herbert Beerbohm Tree, in this age of ours faith is tinged with philosophic doubt, love is regarded as but a spasm of the nervous system, life itself as the refrain of a music-hall song. At the Tabernacle the pastor and people were of a very different way of thinking.

And Mr. Spurgeon was no windbag —vox et præterea nihil; no darling pet of old women whose Christianity was flabby as an oyster. He was an incessant worker, and taught his people to work as well in his enormous church. Such was the orderly arrangement that, as he said, if one of his people were to get tipsy, he should know it before the week was out. He never seemed to lose a moment. “Whenever I have been permitted,” he wrote on one occasion, “sufficient respite from my ministerial duties to enjoy a lengthened tour or even a short excursion, I have been in the habit of carrying with me a small note-book, in which I have jotted down any illustrations that occurred to me on the way. The note-book has been useful in my travels as a mental purse.” Yet the note-book was not intrusive. A friend of mine took Mr. Spurgeon in his steam yacht up the Highlands. Mr. Spurgeon was like a boy out of school – all the while naming the mountains after his friends.

It is also to be noted how the public opinion altered with regard to Mr. Spurgeon. When he came first to London aged ministers and grey-haired deacons shook their heads. What could they think of a young minister who could stop in the middle of his sermon, and say, “Please shut that window down, there is a draught. I like a draught of porter, but not that kind of draught”? It was terrible! What next? was asked in fear and trepidation. These things were, I believe, often said on purpose, and they answered their purpose. “Fire low,” said a general to his men on one occasion. “Fire low,” said old Jay, of Bath, as he was preaching to a class of students. Mr. Spurgeon fired low. It is astonishing how that kind of preaching tells. I was travelling in Essex last summer, and in the train were two old men, one of whom lived in Kelvedon, where Mr. Spurgeon was born, who had sent the Baptist preacher some fruit from Kelvedon, which was, as he expected, thankfully received. “Did you see what Mr. Spurgeon says in this week’s sermon?” said he to the other. “No.” “Why, he said the devil said to him the other day, ‘Mr. Spurgeon, you have got a good many faults,’ and I said to the devil, ‘So have you,’” and then the old saints burst out laughing as if the repartee was as brilliant as it seemed to me the reverse; but I leave censure to the censorious. In his early youth, Sadi, the great Persian classic, tells us, he was over much religious, and found fault with the company sleeping while he sat in attendance on his father with the Koran in his lap, never closing his eyes all night. “Oh, emanation of your father,” replied the old man, “you had better also have slept than that you should thus calumniate the failings of mankind.”

CHAPTER XII.

Memories of Exeter Hall

As the season of the May Meetings draws near, one naturally thinks of Exeter Hall and its interesting associations. When I first came to London it had not long been open, and it was a wonder to the young man from the country to see its capacious interior and its immense platform crowded in every part. It had a much less gorgeous interior than now, but its capacities for stowing away a large audience still remains the same; and then, as now, it was available alike for Churchmen and Dissenters to plead the claims of the great religious societies, but it seems to me that the audiences were larger and more enthusiastic at that early date, though I know not that the oratory was better. Bishops on the platform were rare, and the principal performer in that line was Bishop Stanley, of Norwich, a grotesque-looking little man, but not so famous as his distinguished son, the Dean of Westminster. Leading Evangelical ministers from the country – such as James, of Birmingham, who had a very pathetic voice, and Hugh McNeile, of Liverpool, an Irishman, with all an Irishman’s exuberance of gesture and of language – were a great feature. At times the crowds were so great that a meeting had to be improvised in the Lower Hall, then a much darker hall than it is now, but which, at any rate, answered its end for the time being. The missionary meetings were the chief attraction. Proceedings commenced early, and were protracted far into the afternoon; but the audience remained to the last, the ladies knitting assiduously all the while the report was being read, and only leaving off to listen when the speaking began. Perhaps the most crowded meeting ever held there – at any rate, in my time – was when Prince Albert took the chair to inaugurate Sir Fowell Buxton’s grand, but unfortunate, scheme for the opening up of the Congo. He spoke in a low tone, and with a somewhat foreign accent. Bishop Wilberforce’s oratory on that occasion was overpowering; the Prince’s eyes were rivetted on him all the while. Sir Robert Peel spoke in a calm, dignified, statesmanlike manner, but the expression of his face was too supercilious to be pleasing. And there was Daniel O’Connell – big, burly, rollicking – who seemed to enjoy the triumph of his own presence, though not permitted to speak. The other time when I remember an awful crush at Exeter Hall was at an anti-slavery meeting, when Lord Brougham took the chair; an M.P. dared to attack his lordship, and his reply was crushing, his long nose twitching all the while with a passion he was unable to repress. He looked as angry as he felt. Amongst the missionaries, the most popular speakers were John Williams, the martyr of Erromanga, and William Knibb, the famous Baptist missionary from Jamaica, and Livingstone’s father-in-law, the venerable Dr. Moffat, who, once upon his legs, seemed as if he could never sit down again. Williams was a heavy man in appearance, but of such evident goodness and earnestness that you were interested in what he said nevertheless. William Knibb was, as far as appearance went, quite the reverse; a fiery speaker, the very picture of a demagogue, the champion of the slave, and a terrible thorn in the sides of the slave-owners. Of women orators we had none in those primitive times, and some of the American women who had come to speak at one or other of the Anti-Slavery Conventions – at that time of constant occurrence – were deeply disappointed that, after coming all the way from America on purpose to deliver their testimony, they were not allowed to open their mouths. It was at Exeter Hall that I first heard Mr. Gough, the Temperance advocate – an actor more than an orator, but of wonderful power.

It was at Crosby Hall that I first heard George Dawson. I think it was at one of the meetings held there in connection with what I may call the anti-Graham, demonstration. On the introduction, in 1843, by Sir James Graham of his Factories Education Bill, the Dissenters assailed it with unexpected vehemence. They denounced it as a scheme for destroying the educational machinery they had, at great expense, provided, and for throwing the care of the young into the hands of the clergy of the Church of England. It was in the East of London that the opposition to this measure originated, and a committee was formed, of which Dr. Andrew Reed was chairman, and his son, afterwards Sir Charles, who lived to become Chairman of the London School Board, was secretary. The agitation spread all over the country, and delegates to a considerable number on one occasion found their way to Crosby Hall. In the course of the proceedings a young man in the gallery got up to say that he came from Birmingham to show how the popular feeling had changed there from the time when Church-and-State mobs had sacked the Dissenting chapels, and driven Dr. Priestley into exile. “Your name, sir?” asked the chairman. “George Dawson,” was the reply, and there he stood in the midst of the grave and reverend seigneurs, calm, youthful, self-possessed, with his dark hair parted in the middle, a voice somewhat husky yet clear. He was a Baptist minister, he said, yet he looked as little like one as it was possible to imagine.

It was a little later, that is, in 1857, Mr. Samuel Morley made his début in political life, at a meeting in the London Tavern, of which he was chairman, to secure responsible administration in every department of the State, to shut all the back doors which lead to public employment, to throw the public service open to all England, to obtain recognition of merit everywhere, and to put an end to all kinds of promotion by favour or purchase. Mr. Morley’s speech was clear and convincing – more business-like than oratorical – and he never got beyond that. The tide was in his favour – all England was roused by the tale The Times told of neglect and cruel mismanagement in the Crimea. Since then Government has done less and the people more. Has the change been one for the better?

One of the most extraordinary meetings in which I ever took a part was an Orange demonstration in Freemasons’ Hall, the Earl of Roden in the chair. I was a student at the time, and one of my fellow-students was Sir Colman O’Loghlen, the son of the Irish Master of the Rolls. He was a friend of Dan O’Connell’s, and he conceived the idea of getting all or as many of his fellow-students as possible to go to the meeting and break it up. We walked accordingly, each one of us with a good-sized stick in his hand, to the Free-Mason’s Tavern, the mob exclaiming, as we passed along, “There go the Chartists,” and perhaps we did look like them, for none of us were overdressed. In the hall we took up a conspicuous position, and waited patiently, but we had not long to wait. As soon as the clergy and leading Orangemen on the platform had taken their seats, we were ready for the fray. Apart from us, the audience was not large, and we had the hall almost entirely to ourselves. Not a word of the chairman’s address was audible. There was a madman of the name of Captain Acherley who was in the habit, at that time, of attending public meetings solely for the sake of disturbing them, who urged us on – and we were too ready to be urged on. With our voices and our sticks we managed to create a hideous row. The meeting had to come to a premature close, and we marched off, feeling that we had driven back the enemy, and achieved a triumph. Whether we had done any good, however, I more than doubt. There were other and fairer memories, however, in connection with Freemasons’ Hall. It was there I beheld the illustrious Clarkson, who had come in the evening of his life, when his whole frame was bowed with age, and the grasshopper had become a burden, to preside at the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention. All I can remember of him was that he had a red face, grey hair, and was dressed in black. There, and at Exeter Hall, Joseph Sturge, the Apostle of Peace, was often to be seen. He was a well-made man, with a singularly pleasant cast of countenance and attractive voice, and, as was to be expected, as cool as a Quaker. Another great man, now forgotten, was Joseph Buckingham, lecturer, traveller, author, and orator, M.P. for Sheffield.

In the City the places for demonstrations are fewer now than they were. The London Tavern I have already mentioned. Then there was the King’s Arms, I think it was called, in the Poultry, chiefly occupied by Dissenting societies. At the London Coffee House, at the Ludgate Hill corner of the Old Bailey, now utilised by Hope Brothers, but interesting to us as the scene of the birth and childhood of our great artist, Leech, meetings were occasionally held; and then there was the Crown and Anchor, in the Strand, on your left, just before you get to Arundel Street, where Liberals, or, rather, Whigs, delighted to appeal to the people – the only source of legitimate power. It was there that I heard that grand American orator, Beecher, as he pleaded, amidst resounding cheers, the cause of the North during the American Civil War, and the great Temperance orator, Gough, who took Exeter Hall by storm. But it was to Exeter Hall that the tribes repaired – as they do now. When I first knew Exeter Hall, no one ever dreamt of any other way of regenerating society. Agnosticism, Secularism, Spiritualism, and Altruism had not come into existence. Their professors were weeping and wailing in long clothes. Now we have, indeed, swept into a younger day, and society makes lions of men of whom our fathers would have taken no heed. We have become more tolerant – even Exeter Hall has moved with the times. Perhaps one of the boldest things connected with it was the attempt to utilise it for public religious worship on the Sunday. Originally some of the Evangelical clergy had agreed to take part in these services, but the rector of the parish in which Exeter Hall was situated disapproved, and consequently they were unable to appear. The result was the services were conducted by the leading ministers of other denominations, nor were they less successful on that account.

CHAPTER XIII.

Men I Have Known

It is the penalty of old age to lose all our friends and acquaintances, but fortunately our hold on earth weakens as the end of life draws near. In an active life, we see much of the world and the men who help to make it better. Many ministers and missionaries came to my father’s house with wonderful accounts of the spread of the Gospel in foreign parts. At a later time I saw a knot of popular lecturers and agitators – such as George Thompson, the great anti-slavery lecturer, who, born in humble life, managed to get into Parliament, where he collapsed altogether. As an outdoor orator he was unsurpassed, and carried all before him. After a speech of his I heard Lord Brougham declare it was one of the most eloquent he had ever heard. He started a newspaper, which, however, did not make much way. Then there was Henry Vincent, another natural orator, whom the common people heard gladly, and who at one time was very near getting into Parliament as M.P. for Ipswich, then, as now, a go-ahead town, full of Dissenters and Radicals. He began life as a Chartist and printer, and, I believe, was concerned in the outbreak near Newport. Of the same class was a man of real genius and immense learning, considering the disadvantages of his lowly birth, Thomas Cooper, the Chartist, and author of that magnificent poem, “The Purgatory of Suicides,” written when he was in gaol for being connected with a Chartist outbreak. He had been a Methodist, he became a Freethinker, and, when I knew him, was under the influence of Strauss’s Life of Jesus, a book which George Eliot had translated, and which made a great sensation at the time of its appearance, though it is utterly forgotten now. Cooper and I were members of an obscure club, in one of the Fleet Street courts, where he used to declaim with great eloquence on the evil doings of the Tories and the wrongs of the poor, while at the same time he had a true appreciation of the utter worthlessness of some of the Chartist leaders. As he advanced in years he gave up his infidel opinions and became an earnest advocate of the faith he once laboured to destroy. The last time I saw him was at his house in Lincoln shortly before he died. He seemed sound in body, considering his years, but his mind was gone and he remembered no one. At the same time I saw a good deal of Richard Lovett – a noble character – who worked all his life for the mental and moral improvement of the working man, of whom he was such an illustrious example. Cooper and Vincent and Lovett did much between them to make the working man respected as he had never been before.

One of the grandest old men I ever knew was George Cruikshank, the artist, in his later years an ardent advocate of Temperance, but a real Bohemian nevertheless, enjoying life and all its blessings to the last. At a dinner-party or at a social gathering of any kind he was at his best, full of anecdote, overflowing with wit and mimicry; as an orator also he had great power, and generally managed to keep his audience in a roar of laughter. While perfectly sober himself, he was very happy in taking off the drunkard’s eccentricities, and would sing “We are not fou,” or “Willie brewed a peck o’ malt,” as if he deemed a toper the prince of good fellows. In his old age he had persuaded himself that to him Dickens owed many of his happiest inspirations, a remark which the author of “The Pickwick Papers” strongly resented. At his home I met on one occasion Mrs. Dickens, a very pleasant, motherly lady, with whom one would have thought any husband could have happily lived, although the great novelist himself seemed to be of another way of thinking. Cruikshank’s wife seems to have been devoted to him. She was proud of him, as well she might be. He had a good head of hair, and to the last cherished a tremendous lock which adorned his forehead. He was rather square-built, with an eye that at one time must have rivalled that of the far-famed hawk. He lived comfortably in a good house just outside Mornington Crescent, in the Hampstead Road; but he was never a wealthy man, and was always publishing little pamphlets, which, whatever the fame they brought him, certainly yielded little cash. He had seen a good deal of life, or what a Cockney takes to be such, and when he was buried in Kensal Green, the attendance at the funeral showed how large was the circle of his friends and admirers. To the last he was proud of his whiskers.

Another friend of mine buried in the same place was Dr. Charles Mackay, the original editor of The Illustrated London News, and who differed so much with the proprietor, Mr. Ingram, M.P., on the character of the late French Emperor, for whom Dr. Mackay had a profound contempt, that he had to resign, and commenced The London Review, which did not last long. At one time his songs, “There’s a good time coming, boys,” and “Cheer boys, cheer,” were played on every barrel-organ, and were to be heard in every street. Another of the workers on The Illustrated News was John Timbs, the unwearying publisher of popular books of anecdotes, by which, I fear, he did not make much money, as he had to end his days in the Charter House. His department was to look after the engravings, a duty which compelled him to sit up all night on Thursdays. Before he had joined Mr. Ingram’s staff, he had edited a small periodical called The Mirror, devoted to useful and amusing literature. I fancy his happiest hours were passed chatting with the literary men who were always hovering round the office of the paper – like Mr. Micawber, in the hope of something turning up. You could not be long there without seeing Mark Lemon – a mountain of a man connected with Punch, who could act Falstaff without stuffing – who was Mr. Ingram’s private secretary. A wonderful contrast to Mark Lemon was Douglas Jerrold, a little grey-haired, keen-eyed man, who seemed to me to walk the streets hurriedly, as if he expected a bailiff to touch him on the back. Later, I knew his son, Mr. Blanchard Jerrold, very well, and always found him a very courteous and pleasant gentleman. With Hain Friswell, with the ever-sparkling, black-eyed George Augustus Sala, with that life-long agitator Jesse Jacob Holyoake, for whom I had a warm esteem, I was also on very friendly terms. Once, and once only, I had an interview with Mr. Charles Bradlaugh who, when he recognised me as “Christopher Crayon” of The Christian World, gave me a hearty shake of the hands. Had he lived, I believe he would have become a Christian. At any rate, of later years, his hostility to Christianity seemed to have considerably toned down. Be that as it may, I always held him to be one of the most honest of our public men. I had also the pleasure once of sitting next Mr. Labouchere at a dinner at a friend’s. He talked much, smoked more, and was as witty as Waller, and like him on cold water. Another teetotaler with whom I came much into contact was the late Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson, a shortish, stout man to look at, a good public speaker, and warmly devoted alike to literature and science. Another distinguished man whom I knew well was Mr. James Hinton, the celebrated aurist and a writer on religious matters which at one time had great effect. He was the son of the celebrated Baptist preacher, the Rev. John Howard Hinton, and I was grieved to learn that he had given up his practice as an aurist in Saville Row, and had bought an orange estate far away in the Azores, where he went to die of typhoid fever.

On the whole I am inclined to think I never had a pleasanter man to do with than Mr. Cobden. “Why don’t you commence a movement in favour of Free Trade in land?” I one day said to him. “Ah,” was his reply, “I am too old for that. I have done my share of work. I must leave that to be taken up by younger men.” And, strange to say, though this has always seemed to me the great want of the age, the work has been left undone, and all the nation suffers in consequence. As an illustration of Mr. Cobden’s persuasiveness let me give the following. Once upon a time he came to Norwich to address an audience of farmers there – in St. Andrew’s Hall, I think. On my asking an old Norfolk farmer what he thought of Mr. Cobden as a speaker, his reply was, “Why he got such a hold of us that if he had held up a sheet of white paper on the platform and said it was black, there was not a farmer in the hall but would have said the same.” Cobden never irritated his opponents. He had a marvellous power of talking them round. In this respect he was a wonderful contrast to his friend and colleague, John Bright.

A leading teetotaler with whom I had much to do was the late Mr. Smithies, founder of The British Workman and publications of a similar class. At an enormous expense he commenced his illustrated paper, full of the choicest engravings, and published at a price so as to secure them a place in the humblest home. For a long while it was published at a loss. But Mr. Smithies bravely held on, as his aim, I honestly believe, was to do good rather than make money. He was a Christian social reformer, a Wesleyan, indifferent to politics, as Wesleyans more or less were at one time. Square-built, of rather less than medium height, with a ruddy face, and a voice that could be heard all over Exeter Hall – he looked the picture of health and happiness. I never saw him frown but when I approached him with a cigar in my mouth. Mr. Smithies was one of the earliest to rally round the Temperance banner. His whole life was devoted to doing good in his own way. He never married, and lived with his mother, a fine old lady, who contrived to give her dutiful and affectionate son somewhat of an antiquated cast of thought, and never was he happier than when in the company of Lady Burdett Coutts or great Earl Shaftesbury.

I had also a good deal to do with Mr. W. H. Collingridge, who founded that successful paper, The City Press, which his genial son, Mr. G. Collingridge, still carries on. By means of my connection with The City Press I came into contact with many City leaders and Lord Mayors, and saw a good deal of City life at the Mansion House and at grand halls of the City Companies. I think the tendency in these days is much to run down the City Corporation. People forget that the splendid hospitality of the Mansion House helps to exalt the fame and power of England all the world over. Once upon a time I attended a Liberal public meeting at which two M.P.’s had spoken. One of the committee said to me, “Now you must make a speech.” My reply was that there was no need to do so, as the M.P.’s had said all that was required. “Oh, no,” said my friend, “not a word has been said about the Corporation of London. Pitch into them!” “No, no,” I replied. “I have drunk too much of their punch and swallowed too much of their turtle-soup.” I will never run down the City Fathers, many of whom I knew and respected, and at whose banquets men gathered – not merely City people, but the leading men of all the world. The glory of the Mansion House is the glory of the land.

I could go on for a long while. Have I not been to soirées at great men’s houses and met all sorts and conditions of people? Only two men have I given myself the trouble to be introduced to – one was Barnum, because he frankly admitted he was a humbug, though he seemed a decent fellow enough in private life. Another was Cetewayo, the jolliest-looking Kaffir I ever saw, and I went to see him because our treatment of him was a shame and a national disgrace. Once on a time as we were waiting for Royalty on a distant platform, one of the committee offered to introduce me to H.R.H. I declined, on the plea that I must draw the line somewhere, and that I drew it at princes, but oh! the vanity of wasting one’s time in society. Of the gay world, perhaps the wittiest and pleasantest, as far as my personal experience is concerned, was the late Charles Mathews. I had seen him on the stage and met him in his brougham and talked with him, and once I was invited to a grand party he gave to his friends and admirers. As I went into the reception-room I wondered where the jaunty and juvenile actor could be. All at once I saw a venerable, bald-headed old man coming down on me. Oh! I said to myself, this must be the butler coming to account for his master’s absence. Lo, and behold! it was Charley Mathews himself!

CHAPTER XIV.

How I Put up for M.P

By this time people have got sick of electioneering. It is a great privilege to be an English elector – to feel that the eyes of the world are on you, and that, at any rate, your country expects you to do your duty. But to the candidate an election contest is, at any rate, fraught with instruction. Human nature is undoubtedly a curious combination, and a man who goes in for an election undoubtedly sees a good deal of human nature. I was put up for a Parliamentary borough – I who shudder at the sound of my own voice, and who have come to regard speechmakers with as much aversion as I should the gentleman in black. A borough was for the first time to send a member to Parliament. It had been hawked all over London in vain, and as a dernier ressort the Liberal Association of the borough – a self-elected clique of well-meaning nobodies – had determined to run a highly respectable and well-connected gentleman whose name and merits were alike unknown. Under such circumstances I consented to fight the battle for freedom and independence, as I hold that our best men should be sent to Parliament irrespective of property – that candidates should not be forced on electors, and that unless our Liberal Associations are really representative they may be worked in a way injurious to the country and destructive of its freedom. At my first meeting, like another Cæsar, I came, I saw, I conquered. The chiefs of the Liberal Association had assembled to put me down. I was not put down, and, amidst resounding cheers, I was declared the adopted candidate. The room was crowded with friends. I never shook so many dirty hands in my life. A second meeting, equally successful, confirmed the first, and I at once plunged into the strife. I am not here to write the history of an election, but to tell of my personal experiences, which were certainly amusing. The first result of my candidature led to a visit from an impecunious Scot at my suburban residence, who had read my programme with infinite delight. He came to assure me of his best wishes for my success. He was, unfortunately, not an elector, but he was a Scotchman, as he was sure I was, and sadly in want of a loan, which he was certain, from my Liberal sentiments, I would be the last to refuse to a brother Scot. I had hardly got rid of him before I was called upon by an agent of one of our great Radical societies – a society with which I had something to do in its younger days before it had become great and powerful, but which, like most people when they got up in the world, forgot its humble friends. Ah, thought I, the society is going to give me a little aid to show its appreciation of my ancient service, and I felt pleased accordingly. Not a bit of it. Mr. P. was the collector of the society, and he came to see what he could get out of me, assuring me that almost all the Liberal candidates had responded to his appeal. “Do you think I am going to buy the sanction of your society by a paltry fiver?” was my reply; and the agent went away faster than he came. My next visitor was a pleasant, plausible representative of some workmen’s league, to assure me of his support, and then, with abundance of promise, he went his way, leaving me to look for a performance of which I saw no sign. Then came the ladies. Would I give them an interview? Some of them wanted to set me right on Temperance questions; others on topics on which no right-minded woman should care to speak, and on which few would speak were it not for the morbid, sensational, hysterical feeling which often overcomes women who have no families of their own to look after, no household duties to discharge, no home to adorn and purify. As I had no town house, and did not care to invite the ladies to the smoking-room of my club, I in every such case felt bound to deny myself the pleasure of an interview. But my correspondents came from every quarter of the land. Some offered me their services; others favoured me with their views on things in general. It was seldom I took the trouble to reply to them. One gentleman, I fear, will never forgive me. He was an orator; he sent me testimonials on the subject from such leading organs of public opinion as The Eatanswill Gazette or The Little Pedlington Observer, of the most wonderful character. Evidently as an orator he was above all Greek, above all Roman fame, and he was quite willing to come and speak at my meetings, which was very kind, as he assured me that no candidate for whom he had spoken was ever defeated at the poll. I ought to have retained his services, I ought to have sent him a cheque, or my thanks. Doubtless he would have esteemed them, especially the latter. Alas! I did nothing of the kind.

But oh! the wearisome canvassing, which seems to be the only way to success. Meetings are of little avail, organisation is equally futile, paid agency simply leads the candidate into a Serbonian bog, where

Whole armies oft have perished.

It is house-to-house visitation that is the true secret now. As far as I carried it out I was successful, though I did not invariably embrace the wife of the voter or kiss the babies. The worst of it is, it takes so much time. Now and then your friend is supernaturally wise. You must stop and hear all he has to say, or you make him an enemy. Some people – and I think they were right – seemed to think a candidate has no business to canvass electors at all. One highly respectable voter seemed really angry as he told me, with a severity worthy of a judge about to sentence a poor wretch to hanging, it was quite needless for me to call, that he was not going to disgrace his Baptist principles. Passing a corner public one Saturday I was met with a friendly recognition. “We’re all going to oblige you, Sir,” said the spokesman of the party, in a tone indicating that either he had not taken the Temperance pledge, or that he was somewhat lax in his observance of it, “and now you must oblige us will you?” Him I left a sadder and a wiser man, as I had to explain that the trifling little favour he sought at my hands might invalidate my election. One female in a Peabody Building was hurt because I had in my haste given a postman’s rap at the door, instead of one more in use in genteel society. In many a model lodging-house I found a jolly widow, who, in answer to my appeal if there were any gentlemen, seemed to intimate that the male sex were held in no particular favour. The Conservative female was, as a rule, rather hard and sarcastic, and I was glad to beat a retreat, as she gave me to understand that she was not to be deceived by anything I might say, and that she should take care how her husband voted. Now and then I was favoured with a dissertation on the evil of party, but I could always cut that short by the remark, “Oh, I see you are going to vote for the Conservative candidate!” – a remark which led to a confession that in reality such was the case. The newly enfranchised seemed proud of their privilege. It was not from them I got the reply which I often heard where I should have least expected it, “Oh, I never interfere in politics.” People who had fads were a great bore. One man would not vote for me because I was not sound on the Sunday question; others who were of the same political opinions as myself would not support me because I laughed at their pet theories. But the great drawback was that I had come forward without leave from the party chiefs, and hence their toadies, lay or clerical, sternly held aloof. Barely was I treated uncourteously, except when my declaration that I was a Radical led to an intimation on the part of the voter that the sooner I cleared out the better.

I would suggest that all canvassing be prohibited – you want to get at the public opinion of the borough, and that you do not obtain when you extort a promise from a voter who has no definite opinion himself. Public meetings and an advertisement or circular should be sufficient; but there are many voters who will not take the trouble to attend, and a public meeting, even if enthusiastic, is no criterion of what the vote will be. It is easy to get up a public meeting if a candidate will go to the necessary expense; and it is easier still to spoil one if the opposition committee can secure the services of a few roughs or an Irishman or two. Democratic Socialists I also found very efficient in that way, unable as they would have been to carry a candidate, or to hold a public meeting themselves. One of the funniest performances was, after you had had your say, to reply to the questions. As a rule, the questioner thinks chiefly of himself. He likes the sound of his voice, and he sits down with a self-satisfied smile – if he be an old hand – as if he had made it self-evident that he knew a thing or two, and that he was not the sort of man you could make a fool of. But heckling, as it is called, is a science little understood. It is one of the fine arts. A candidate, for instance, likes to make a statement when he replies to a question. The questioner, if he is up to the mark, will gain a cheer, as he denounces all attempts at evasion, and demands a straightforward, Yes or No. A man asks you, for instance, Have you left off beating your wife yet? How are you to answer Yes or No in such a case? As a rule, the questioners are poor performers, and ask you what no one need ask who hears a candidate’s speech, or reads his programme. One thing came out very clearly – that is, the terror platform orators, lay or clerical, have of any body calling itself a Liberal Association, whether it is really that or not. You can get any number of orators, on the condition that you have an association at your back. But they dare not otherwise lend you a helping hand. Liberalism is to have the stamp of Walbrook on it. It must be such as the wirepullers approve. I said to a Radical M.P.: “I am fighting a sham caucus.” “Ain’t they all shams?” was his reply. There is a danger in this; even though there are still men left in this age of mechanical organism who value the triumph of principles more even than that of party.

My experience is anybody can get into Parliament if he will keep pegging away and has plenty of money. Let him keep himself before the public – by writing letters to the newspapers, and by putting in an appearance at all public meetings, and by promising wholesale as to what he will do. If he can bray like a bull, and has a face of brass, and has money or friends who have it, he may be sure of success. As a rule, the best way is to get yourself known to the public in connection with some new development of philanthropic life. But a little money is a great help. Gold touches hearts as nothing else can. The biggest Radical of two candidates naturally prefers the richer. Men who can crowd into all meetings, and shout “Buggins for ever,” are useful allies, and men of that stamp have little sympathy with the poor candidates. Once in Parliament you are useless, at the beck and call of the whipper-in, a slave to party; but you are an M.P. nevertheless, and may not call your soul your own.

CHAPTER XV.

How I Was Made a Fool Of

At length I am in the home of the free, where all men are equal, where O’Donovan Rossa may seek to blast the glories of a thousand years, where a Henry George may pave the way for an anarchy such as the world has never yet seen, where even Jem Blaine, as his admirers term him, passes for an honest man, and claims to have a firm grip on the Presidential chair.

I am unfortunate on my landing. I have the name of one of Cook’s hotels on my lips, and as I know Mr. John Cook makes better terms for his customers than they can do for themselves, I resolve to go there, but every one tells me there is no such hotel as that I ask for in New York, and I am taken to one which is recommended by a respectable-looking policeman. Unfortunately, it is the head-quarters of the veteran corps of the Army of the Potomac, who swarm all over the place, as they did all over the South in the grand times of old. I am not fond of heroes; heroes are the men who have kept out of danger, while their less fortunate comrades have been mowed down, and who appropriate the honours which belong often to the departed alone. Well, these heroes are holding the fort so tightly that I resolve to leave my quarters and explore the Broadway, one of the most picturesque promenades in the world. Suddenly I meet a stranger, who asks me how I am. I reply he has the advantage of me. “Oh,” says he, “you were at our store last night.” I reply that was impossible. He tells me his name is Bodger, I tell him my name, which, however, he does not catch, whereupon he shakes my hand again, says how happy he is to have met me, and we part to meet no more. I go a few steps farther, and go through the same process with another individual. I bear his congratulations with fortitude, but when, a few minutes after, the same thing occurs again, I begin to wish I were in Hanover rather than in New York, and I resolve to seek out Cook’s Agency without further delay. Of course I was directed wrong, and that led to a disaster which will necessarily shorten my visit to Uncle Sam. Perhaps I ought not to tell my experience. People generally are silent when they have to tell anything to their own discredit. If I violate that rule, it will be to put people on their guard. If I am wrong in doing so, I hope the rigid moralist will skip this altogether.

Suddenly, a young man came rushing up to me, with a face beaming with joy. “Good morning, Mr. – ,” he exclaimed; “I am so glad we have met.” I intimated that I did not recollect him. “Oh!” said he, “we came over in the Sarnia together.” Well, the story was not improbable. Of the 1,000 on board the Sarnia I could not be expected to remember all. “My name is G.,” mentioning a well-known banker in London, and then he began to tell me of his travels, at what hotel he was staying, and finally added that he had been presented with a couple of Longfellow’s Poems, handsomely bound, as a prize, and that he would be glad if I would accept one. Well, as my copy of Longfellow was rather the worse for wear, I told him I would accept it with pleasure. But I must come with him for it. I did so, and while doing so learned from him that the prize had been given in connection with a lottery scheme for raising money to build a church down South. The idea seemed to me odd, but Brother Jonathan’s ways are not as ours, and I was rather pleased to find that I had thus a new chance of seeing religious life, and of having something fresh to write about. I am free to confess, as the great Brougham was wont to say, I jumped at the offer. In a few minutes we were inside a respectable-looking house, where a tall gentleman invited us to be seated, regretting that the copies of Longfellow had not come home from the binder’s, and promising that we should have them by noon. Next he unfolded what I thought was a plan of the proposed church, but which proved to be a chart with figures – with prizes, as it seemed to me, to all the figures. To my horror my friend took up the cards, and asked me to select them for him. This I did, and he won a thousand dollars, blessing me as he shook hands with me warmly, and saying that as I had won half I must have half. Well, as the ticket had certain conditions, and as I felt that it was rather hard on the church to take all that money, I continued the game for a few minutes, my young friend being eager that I should do so, till the truth dawned upon me that I had been drawn into a swindlers’ den, and that I and my friend were dupes, and I resolved to leave off playing, much to the regret of my friend, who gave the keeper of the table a cheque for £100, which he would pay for me, as I would not, and thus by another effort retrieve my loss. There was one spot only on the board marked blank, and that, of course, was his. Burning with indignation I got up to go, my friend following me, saying how much he regretted that he had led me into such a place, offering to pay me half my losses when he returned to town, and begging me not to say a word about the subject when I got back to London, as it might get him into a row. I must say, so great has been my experience of honour among men, and never having been in New York before, I believed in that young man till we parted, as I did not see how he could have gained all the knowledge he displayed of myself and movements unless he had travelled with me as he said, and had never heard of Bunkum men. I had not gone far, however, before I was again shaken by the hand by a gentlemanly young fellow, who claimed to have met me at Montreal, where he had been introduced to me as the son of Sir H – A – . He had been equally lucky – had got two books, and, as he was going back to Quebec that very afternoon, would give me one of them if I would ride with him as far as his lodgings. Innocently I told him my little tale. He advised me to say nothing about it, as I had been breaking the law and might get myself into trouble, and then suddenly recollecting he must get his ticket registered, and saying that he would overtake me directly, left me to go as far as the place of our appointed rendezvous alone. Then the truth flashed on me that both my pretended friends were rogues, and that I had been the victim of what, in New York, they call the Bunkum men, who got 300 dollars out of Oscar Wilde, and a good deal more out of Mr. Adams, formerly American Ambassador in England. I had never heard of them, I own, and both the rogues had evidently got so much of my history by heart that I might well fancy that they were what they described themselves to be. As to finding them out to make them regorge that was out of the question. Landlords and policemen seemed to take it quite as a matter of course that the stranger in New York is thus to be done. Since then I have hardly spoken to a Yankee, nor has a Yankee spoken to me. I now understand why the Yankees are so reserved, and never seem to speak to each other. They know each other too well. I now understand also how the men you meet look so thin and careworn, and can’t sleep at nights. We are not all saints in London. Chicago boasts that it is the wickedest city in the world, but I question whether New York may not advance a stronger claim to the title. Yet what an Imperial city is New York! How endless is its restless life! and how it runs over with the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and worldly pride! As I wandered to the spot in Wall Street (where, by the bye, the stockbrokers and their clerks are not in appearance to be compared to our own) I felt, sad as I was, a thrill of pleasure run through me, as there Washington took the oath as the first President of the young and then pure Republic; and then, as the evening came on, I strolled up and down in the park-like squares by means of which New York looks like a fairy world by night, with the people sitting under the shade of the trees, resting after the labours of the day; while afar the gay crowds are dining or supping at Delmonico’s, or wandering in and out of the great hotels which rear their heads like palaces – as I looked at all that show and splendour (and in London we have nothing to compare with it), one seemed to forget how evanescent was that splendour, how unreal that show! I was reminded of it, however, as I retired to rest, by the announcement that in one part of my hotel was the way to the fire-escape, and by the notice in my bedroom that the proprietor would not be responsible for my boots if I put them outside the door to be blackened. In New York there seems to be no confidence in anybody or anything.

As I told my story to a sweet young American lady she said, “Ah, you must have felt very mean.” “Not a bit of it,” said I; “the meanness seemed to be all on the other side.” Americans talk English, so they tell me, better than we do ourselves! Since then I have seen the same game played elsewhere. In Australia I have heard of many a poor emigrant robbed in this way. A plausible looking gentleman tried it on with me at Melbourne when I was tramping up and down Burke Street one frying afternoon. He had come with me, he said, by the steamer from Sydney to Melbourne. I really thought I had met him at Brisbane. At any rate, his wife was ill, and he was going back with her to London by the very steamer that I was travelling by to Adelaide. Would I come with him as far as the Club? Of course I said yes. The Melbourne Club is rather a first-class affair. But somehow or other we did not get as far as the Club. My friend wanted to call on a friend in a public-house on the way. Would I have a drink? No, I was much obliged, but I did not want a drink. I sat down smoking, and he came and sat beside me. Presently a decent-looking man came up to my new friend with a bill. “Can’t you wait till to-morrow?” asked my friend. “Well, I am rather pressed for money,” said the man, respectfully. “Oh, then, here it is,” said my friend, pulling a heap of gold, or what looked like it, out of his pocket. “By the bye,” said he, turning to me, “I am a sovereign short; can you lend me one?” No, I could not. Could I lend him half-a-sovereign? No; I could not. Could I lend him five shillings? I had not even that insignificant sum to spare. “Oh, it does not matter,” said my friend; “I can get the money over the way, I will just go and fetch it, and will be back in five minutes.” And he and his confederate went away together to be seen no more by me. Certainly he was not on board the Austral, as I took my passage in her to Adelaide.

As I left I met a policeman.

“Have you any rogues in these parts?” I innocently asked.

“Well, we have a few. There was one from New York a little while ago, but he had to go back home. He said he was no match for our Melbourne rogues at all.” It was well that I escaped scot-free. On the steamer in which I returned there was a poor third-class passenger who had lost his all in such a way. He was fool enough to let the man treat him to a drink, and that little drink proved rather a costly affair. All his hard-earned savings had disappeared.

CHAPTER XVI.

Interviewing the President

It is about time, I wrote one day in America, I set my face homeward. When on the prairie I was beginning to speculate whether I should ever be fit to make an appearance in descent society again. Now, it seems to me, the question to be asked is, Whether I have not soared so high in the world as to have lost all taste for the frugal simplicity of that home life, where, in the touching words of an American poet I met with this morning, it is to be trusted my

Daughters are acting day by day,
So as not to bring disgrace on their papa far away.

Here, in Washington, I am made to pass for an “Honourable,” in spite of my modest declarations to the contrary, and have had the honour of a private interview with the greatest man in this part of the world – the President of the United States. One night, when I retired to rest, I found my bedroom on the upper storey – contiguous to the fire-escape, a convenience you are always bound to remember in the U.S. – had been changed for a magnificent bedroom, with a gorgeous sitting-room attached, on the first floor, and there loomed before me a terrific vision of an hotel bill which I supposed I should have to pay: but then, “What’s the odds so long as you are happy?” The question is, How came the change to be made? Well, the fact is, I had a letter to a distinguished politician, the Hon. Senator B – , and he, in his turn, sent me a packet addressed to the Hon. J. E – R – ; and all at once I became a great man myself in the hotel. In a note Mr. B – sent to the President he informed him that I had been for thirty years a correspondent of certain papers; and in another note to officials he has the goodness to speak of me as “the Hon. Mr. R – , a distinguished citizen and journalist of England.” Certainly, then, I have as good a right to the best accommodation the hotel affords as any other man, and accordingly I do take my ease in my inn, and not dream, but do dwell, in marble halls, while obsequious blackies fan me as I eat my meals, which consist of all the dainties possible – the only things a fellow can eat this hot weather. I am glad I have put up at Ebbet House, Washington, where I am in clover. Like Bottom, I feel myself “translated.” At Baltimore, the only night I was there, I did not get a minute’s sleep till daylight, because the National Convention of Master Plumbers was holding its annual orgy just beneath, and I seriously believed the place would be burned down before the morning. In the dignified repose of Ebbet House I have no such fear; my only anxiety is as to how I can ever again reconcile myself to the time-honoured cold mutton of domestic life after all this luxurious living. What made Senator B – confer the dignity of Hon. on me I am at a loss to understand. I know there are times when I think it right and proper to blow my own trumpet in the unavoidable absence of my trumpeter; but, in the present instance, I must candidly confess to have done nothing of the kind. It is to be presumed that my improved position, as regards lodging in Ebbet House, Washington, is to be attributed to the social status given me by Senator B – , a gentleman who, in personal appearance and size, bears somewhat of a resemblance to our late lamented Right Hon. W. E. Forster, with the exception that Mr. B – brushes his hair – a process which evidently our Bradford M.P. disdained.