Lincolnshire county jail. One morning there was to be a
hanging; and the usual little crowd of witnesses, consisting of the
sheriff, the governor, three or four reporters, a magistrate, and a
couple of warders, was assembled in the prison. The condemned man, a
brutal ruffian who had been found guilty of murdering a young girl under
exceptionally revolting circumstances, was being pinioned by the hangman
and his assistant; and my uncle was employing the last few moments at his
disposal in trying to break down the sullen indifference the fellow had
throughout manifested towards both his crime and his fate.

"My uncle failing to make any impression upon him, the governor ventured
to add a few words of exhortation, upon which the man turned fiercely on
the whole of them.

"'Go to hell,' he cried, 'with your snivelling jaw. Who are you, to
preach at me? _You're_ glad enough I'm here--all of you. Why, I'm the
only one of you as ain't going to make a bit over this job. Where would
you all be, I should like to know, you canting swine, if it wasn't for me
and my sort? Why, it's the likes of me as _keeps_ the likes of you,'
with which he walked straight to the gallows and told the hangman to
'hurry up' and not keep the gentlemen waiting."

"There was some 'grit' in that man," said MacShaughnassy.

"Yes," added Jephson, "and wholesome wit also."

MacShaughnassy puffed a mouthful of smoke over a spider which was just
about to kill a fly. This caused the spider to fall into the river, from
where a supper-hunting swallow quickly rescued him.

"You remind me," he said, "of a scene I once witnessed in the office of
_The Daily_--well, in the office of a certain daily newspaper. It was
the dead season, and things were somewhat slow. An endeavour had been
made to launch a discussion on the question 'Are Babies a Blessing?' The
youngest reporter on the staff, writing over the simple but touching
signature of 'Mother of Six,' had led off with a scathing, though
somewhat irrelevant, attack upon husbands, as a class; the Sporting
Editor, signing himself 'Working Man,' and garnishing his contribution
with painfully elaborated orthographical lapses, arranged to give an air
of verisimilitude to the correspondence, while, at the same time, not to
offend the susceptibilities of the democracy (from whom the paper derived
its chief support), had replied, vindicating the British father, and
giving what purported to be stirring midnig