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 and four,

galloping through a wild country, and through the dead of the night, at the then surprising rate of fifteen miles an hour. The

very last time I was at Exeter, I strolled into the castle-yard there, to identify, for the amusement of a friend, the spot on which I once 'took ,' as we used to call it, an election -speech of Lord John Russell at the Devon contest , in the midst of a lively

fight maintained by all the vagabonds in that division of the country, and under such a pelting rain that I remember two good -natured colleagues, who chanced to be at leisure, held a pocket-handkerchief over my note-book, after the manner of a state canopy in an ecclesiastical procession. I have worn my knees by writing on them on the old back row of the old gallery

of the old House of Commons; and I have worn my feet by standing to write in a preposterouspen in the old House of Lords, where we used to be huddled together like so many sheep, - kept in waiting,say, until thewoolsack might wantrestuffing. Return ing home from exciting political meetings in the country to the

waiting press in London, I do verily believe I have been upset in almost every description of vehicle known in this country. I have been, in my time, belated on miry by -roads, towards the

small hours, forty or fifty miles from London, in a wheelless carriage, with exhausted horses and drunken post-boys, and have got back in time for publication, to be received with never

forgotten compliments by the late Mr. Black, coming in the broadest of Scotch from the broadest of hearts I ever knew. These trivial things I mention as an assurance to you that I never have forgotten the fascination of that old pursuit. The pleasure that I used to feel in the rapidity and dexterity of its

exercise has never faded out of my breast.” 2 With change of scene, these are the conditions under which reports

to-day must often be written. It is possible that an explanation may be found in the words of an experienced editor, — “ The case of the reporter ' is to a con siderable extent a question ofmoral education, ” 3 or the older ex

planation of Addison 'smay hold good to the effect that sensations must be manufactured if not found at hand. He says: " It is an old observation that a time of peace is always a time of prodigies ; for, as our news-writers must adorn their papers with that which the critics call the marvellous, they are forced into a dead calm of affairs, to ransack every element for proper 9 John Forster, Life of Charles Dickens, I , 99- 100.

3 W. L. Cook, “ The Press in its Relation to History,” History Teacher 's

Magazine, January, 1914, 5 : 3 -8.