period of probation as contributor of occasional articles descriptive of current events. I might, in the ordinary course of events, have continued in that line, as my friend and colleague Senior has done these twenty years, with honour to himself and credit to the paper. But here, again, chance befell and irresistibly led me back to the Press Gallery. In this very year a change took place in a longstanding management of the Daily News Parliamentary corps and the writing of its summary, and Mr. Robinson designated me as successor of the gentleman who retired. It was a curious and, in some respects, a delicate position, seeing that I was, compared with some members of the staff, a mere chicken in point of age. There were three who had been on the paper since it started, any one of whom might, had Fortune favoured me in that direction, have been my grandfather. But we got along admirably, they easing my path with kindly counsel and the friendliest consideration.
Mr. Robinson.
It was different with some of the old hands on the other corps, who bitterly resented the intrusion. I am not quite sure whether the two or three who still survive have got over it yet. Certainly old "Charlie" Ross, then and for some years after manager of the Times staff, carried the feeling to his honoured grave. After I had sat next but one to him in the gallery for many Sessions he used, on encountering me in the passage, to greet me with a startled expression, as if I were once more an intruder, and would walk back to the outer doorkeeper (whom he autocratically called Smeeth, because his name was Wright) to ask, "Who's that?"
Three old men.
Old Ross's personal affront in this matter probably dated back to the Session of 1872, when I took an occasional turn for a friend who was a member of his staff. This was young Latimer, son of the proprietor of the Western Daily Mercury, who had been called to the Bar and occasionally got a brief on the Western Circuit. When he went out of town I became his substitute in respect of his Parliamentary duties. It was Mr. Ross's custom of an afternoon to seat himself on the bench in the ante-chamber of the Press Gallery, armed with a copy of the Times report of the day, with the "turns" all marked with the name of the man who had written them. He genially spent the morning in reading the prodigious collocation in search of errors. When found, these were made a note of, the guilty person was sent for and had a more or less pleasant quarter of an hour. This was called being "on the gridiron."
I had only one experience of the process. Seated one day by command beside this terrible old gentleman, he produced the marked passage containing one of my turns, pointing to the name, Mr. Ward Hunt, fixed a glowering eye on me and said, with his slow intonation:—
"Who is 'Mr. Ward Hunt'?"
"He is the member for North Northamptonshire," I timidly replied.
"Oh!" he said, witheringly, "that's whom you mean. 'Ward Hunt'! Let me tell you, sir, Ward Hunt may do very well for the penny papers, but in the Times report we write 'Mr. W. Hunt.'"
I don't know why this should have been, since the burly gentleman, who in the next Parliament was Chancellor of the Exchequer, was invariably called by his full style. But then, as I have said, nobody knew why old "Charlie" Ross dubbed Wright Smith, and pronounced it Smeeth.
Gentlemen of the Press Gallery who now live at Westminster at ease, with their library, their smoking-room, their choice of writing-out rooms, their admirably-appointed and self-administered commissariat department, little know the state of things that existed twenty years ago. Committee Room No. 18 had then recently been appointed to their use
