ran on a single wheel in
an iron groove, and the man was dead in a second. The white cap fitted
close to his face, and the thin white linen took a momentary stain of
purple, as if a bag of blackberries had been bruised and had suddenly
exuded the juice of the fruit. It sagged away a moment later and assumed
its natural hue.

I learned from the evening paper and from the journals of next morning
that the prisoner met his fate with equanimity. I think that in that
report I bottomed the depths of human stupidity, if such a thing is
possible. I had never seen a man afraid before; and, when I found time
to think about it, I prayed that I might never see that shameful and
awful sight again.

II

I wrote three small-type columns--three columns of leaded minion--about
that execution, describing everything I had seen with a studied
minuteness. Dawson was nervous about the whole affair, and, whilst the
copy was yet in the hands of the printer, asked two or three times what
had been done with the theme. He was kept at bay by the subeditor, who
scented a sensation, and was afraid that the editor-in-chief might cut
the copy to pieces. Dawson was purposely kept waiting for proofs so long
that at last he went home without seeing them; and he often spoke to me
afterwards of the rage and anguish he felt when he opened the paper at
his breakfast-table and found that great mass of space devoted to the
report of an execution. He began, so he told me, by reading the last
paragraph first; then he read the paragraph preceding it; and next,
beginning resolutely at the beginning, found himself compelled to read
the whole ghastly narrative clean through. The machine was at work
all day to supply the local demand for this particular horror, and Mr.
George Augustus Sala wrote specially to ask who was the author of the
narrative. I began to think my fortune made.

The journalist is like the doctor, his services are in requisition
mainly in times of trouble. The Black Country which lies north of
Birmingham is full of disaster, and the special correspondent has a big
field there. Quite early in my career I was sent out to Pelsall Hall,
near Walsall, where a mine had been flooded and two-and-thirty men were
known to be in the workings. I was born and bred in the mining district,
and was familiar with the heroism of the miners. They are not all
heroes, and even those who are are not always heroic. But use breeds a
curious indifference to da