a voice of pride, modulated by charity, proclaimed, 'My brother of Canterbury has already succumbed,' and the window was drawn up again.

The captain allowed me to stand by his side on the bridge. It was one of the old-fashioned small boats-the Foam, perhaps.

The vessel gave a sudden lurch as we neared Dover, and I was thrown over the brass rail, against which I was leaning, and fell on my head against a brass-bound hatchway. Everybody was most kind. I was picked up and bandaged, and as the passengers trooped up the gangway at Dover the Archbishop of Canterbury (recovered from, and fortified by, the penance of sea-sickness) was especially good-natured in assisting me. I had two impediments—a hat-box, containing a schoolboy top-hat, and a handbag full of illicit Tauchnitz novels. The amiable prelate relieved me of the latter, not knowing what he did, and in blameless error carried the contraband bundle past the Customs - house officials, who piously saluted England's supreme ecclesiastic, while they waylaid his invalid protégé, and made me expose the innocent interior of my hat-box before they would inscribe upon it their nihil obstat in the form of chalk-mark.

CHAPTER II

I leave school-Paris and the Palais Royal-The Examiner-I make the acquaintance of a promising young man- The Savile Club-Besant-Rudyard Kipling-A village editorRobert Louis Stevenson-The Rabelais Club-Sir Frederick Pollock and Lord Houghton-George Venables and Francis Garden.

IN 1873 I succeeded in persuading my family that I was too delicate to remain at school. I accordingly left Westminster, and practically followed my own devices for a couple of years. I attended a few lectures at King's College, London, and went to a good many theatres; I also contrived, somehow or other, to go over frequently to Paris. My favourite theatre there was the Palais Royal, where there was certainly an unrivalled company of comedians-Geoffroy, L'Heritier, Gil Perez, Hyacinth, Brasseur, and a comparative lad called Lassouche, who, I see, is now seventy-something; he was severely injured in an accident a little while back, I was sorry to see. I used to watch these old men over their mazagrans at the Cent Mille Colonnes or one of the cheap restaurants in the Place du Palais

Royal. At about five or ten minutes before the rise of the curtain they would toddle off to their theatre, and, with no more alteration in their appearance than was achieved by a daub of vermilion on each cheek and a touch of black to the eyelids, they would come on to the stage and keep one in an almost painful convulsion of laughter till the fall of the curtain.

It was at this period that I started writing. Minto, who afterwards became a Professor at the Aberdeen University, was editor of the Examiner, and he used very kindly to give me novels to review. Being myself barely seventeen years of age, I used generally to begin my notices, 'This is evidently the work of a very young writer.' I subsequently became dramatic critic, but was presently superannuated, and retired, covered with honour, at the age of eighteen. The staff of the Examiner used to foregather on one evening every month under the auspices of the hospitable Minto, when I used to have the pleasure of meeting Andrew Lang, Edmund Gosse, Walter Pollock, A. J. Duffield, young Justin McCarthy, and others. McCarthy, and others. I once met there a singular young man, who attracted a good deal of attention for a short time-a certain Hector Gordon. He was about two-and-twenty. He was extremely clever. He had passed well for the

Civil Service; he wrote not only for the Examiner,

A PROMISING YOUNG MAN

23

but for more than one of the weekly papers, and was looked upon in literary circles as a young man who would go far.

Although he had no apparent vices-he did not squander money on clothes, or gamble, or keep up expensive establishments-still, he was extravagant. He gave excellent dinners at the Café Royal; he never walked a hundred yards, but always took a hansom; he went abroad whenever he felt inclined, and always stayed at the best hotels. But nobody wondered whence he got his means. He was simply accepted as an agreeable change from the ordinary young man of letters who is always in want of five pounds.

I once went to Paris with him for a short holiday. I put up at a little hotel in the Rue du Dauphin ; he took a suite of rooms at the Mirabeau in the Place Vendôme. I got out with him at his hotel when we arrived. He immediately summoned the head-waiter. 'Are you the head-waiter ?' he asked when that intendant appeared. 'Yes, sir,' replied the man. 'I shall be staying here for some time most likely,' said Gordon, 'so please see that I'm properly waited upon.' And he gave the man an English five-pound note. The man made a profound reverence and withdrew, walking backwards. In a few minutes it was all over the hotel that an English milord had arrived who shed bank-notes

broadcast. As we walked together along a corridor, or came downstairs, or crossed the hall, everyone bowed-chambermaids, waiters, boots, page, clerks, landlord. Even other visitors in the hotel caught the infection, and slightly inclined their heads.

We had a very pleasant few weeks in Paris. We used to ride in the Bois, breakfast at Voisin's, dine at the Maison Dorée, go to a theatre, and finish our night at the Café Américain or Tortoni's.

One morning when I called for my friend-it was about our second week in Paris-I found him in his dressing-gown pacing up and down his salon, pale with fury, and the manager trembling before him. Believe me, sir-I regret very much,' the man was saying, 'but it is the rule of the hotel to present the bill once a week. This is already the second week. And there are the seats for the theatre, and the saddle-horses, and one day, when monsieur had come downstairs without his purse, there was an advance from the caisse, and-' 'Very well, then,' said Gordon. 'Bring me my bill on Saturday-this very next Saturday, mind— and I'll leave your infernal hotel, and go somewhere where they know how to behave.' 'As you please, sir,' said the manager, retiring with a rueful expression. Very sorry, but it is the rule of the hotel.' 'Well, young man,' said Hector, turning to me with a sunny smile, 'where shall we ride to-day?'