Bygones Worth Remembering, Vol. 1 (of 2)

cturesque. He was slim, alert, and fervid. The subject of debate was the famous delineation of the Bottle, by George Cruikshank, which I regarded as a libel on the wholesome vir

, and he did right to adopt the rule of absolute abstinence. It was his only salvation. To every man or woman of the Cruikshank tendency I would preach the same doctrine. To all others

d as possessing insufficiency of brains, and it is bad economics to put a

self, or fails to keep an engagement, or departs, in his behaviour from his best manner

he experiment-many thousands. The Workman, in which I had a department, was intended, I was told, to be a forerunner of the halfpenny paper. But that title would never do, as I ventured to predict. Workmen, as a rule with no partnership in profits, had enough of work without buying a paper about it. Tradesmen, middle-class and others, did not want to be taken for workmen, and the Workman was discontinued. But, strange to say, the same paper issued under the title of Work became successful Everybody was interest

amb, he continually sent gifts, and Coleridge dined at his table every Sunday for nineteen years. Landor, who had always nobility of character, and was an impulsive writer-represented Mr. Allsop's interest in European freedom as proceeding from "vanity," forgetful of his own letter to Jessie Meriton White, offering ￡100 to any assassin of Napoleon III.; and John Forster preserves Landor's remark upon Mr. Allsop, but does not, so far as I remember, give Landor's Assassin Letter. The fact was, no man less sought publicity or disliked it more than Mr. All

Friend."* Landor was quite wrong, there was no "vanity" in the Allsop family. Were Thomas Allsop the younger now living I should not write these paragraphs. As it is, I may say that I owed to his generosity an annuity of ￡100. He commenced it by a subscript

ars," chap.

retary and I the chairman. We were assisted by an influential committee of civic and industrial leaders. After six years' agitation we were mainly instrumental (that was in Mr. Gladstone's days) in obtaining the repeal of the penny a mile tax on all third-class fares, effected by Mr. Childers in 1883, which ever since has put into the pocket of working-class travellers ￡400,000 a year, besides the improved carriages and improved service the repeal has enabled railway companies to give. We continued the committee many years longer in the hope of freeing the railways wholly from taxation, which still hampers the directors and is obstructive of commerce. I was chairman for twenty-four years, during which time twenty-two of the committee died. Our memorials, interviews with ministers, correspondence with officials, petitions to Parliament, public meetings and

ttended dinner party in the National Liberal Club, at which to my gratification, Mr. Walter Morrison presided. The speakers, and distinction of

ew

retch'd forefi

le fo

y me

illed with faces familiar and unfamiliar, from near and far, of artists, poets, publicists, journalists, philosophers, as at the National Liberal Club, but in greater numbers. Lady Florence Dixie purchased a large and costly oil pa

phew, Rola

ption to be given to him on the occasion of his eighty-sixth birthday. I can do nothing more than express my warm feeling of concurrence. Not dwelling upon his intellectual capacity, which is high,

Sun. The Rev. Dr. Joseph Parker had been my predecessor. I was left at liberty

As I was paid ten times as much as I had received

operative Union Memorial Committee, Manchester, is the following l

Jewry,

7, 1853. "R

lad to see your h

ing to me a pam

ill breakfast with m

railway to Hornsey,

o'clock

too cold for you, a

ouse, which is three

be agr

rs t

. Ash

eturn abou

mingham to Worcester, or from Huddersfield to Sheffield-to lecture, I should find it an advantage to use the horse road, as on the footpath there is more unev

um Road, where policemen, stationed to protect the passengers, had enough to do to keep their own toes on their feet, in the undivided traffic of cabs. I wrote to the Times suggesting that a lamp should be erected in the middle of the wide road

citizens of Paris went out at night in bands of twenty or thirty heroically to help to raise the siege-on what ground could we offer to honour Bazaine, who with 192,000 soldiers under his command, was afraid to

d in London and began to do a respectable business in public mystification. From information supplied to me I wrote letters exp

s of other things,