s
very disorderly. I carried him out and chastised him.'"

It was while he was engaged on _Vanity Fair_ that I first met
Runciman--I should think somewhere about the year 1880. He then edited
(or sub-edited) for a short time that clever but abortive little
journal, _London_, started by Mr. W.E. Henley, and contributed to
by Andrew Lang, Robert Louis Stevenson, Edmund Gosse, and half a dozen
more of us. Here we met not infrequently. I was immensely impressed by
Runciman's vigorous personality, and by his profound sympathy with the
troubles and trials and poverty of the real people. He called himself
a Conservative, it is true, while I called myself a Radical; but,
except in name, I could not see much difference between our democratic
tendencies. Runciman appeared to me a most earnest and able thinker,
full of North-country grit, and overflowing with energy.

His later literary work is well known to the world. He contributed to
the _St. James's Gazette_ an admirable series of seafaring sketches,
afterwards reprinted as "The Romance of the North Coast." He also
wrote "special" articles for the _Standard_ and the _Pall Mall_, as
well as essays on social and educational topics for the _Contemporary_
and the _Fortnightly_. The humour and pathos of pupil-teaching were
exquisitely brought out in his "School Board Idylls" and "Schools and
Scholars"; his knowledge of the sea and his experience of fishermen
supplied him with materials for "Skippers and Shellbacks" and for
"Past and Present." He was always a lover of his kind, so his work has
almost invariably a strong sympathetic note; and perhaps his
best-known book, "A Dream of the North Sea," was written in support of
the Mission to Fishermen. He produced but one novel, "Grace Balmaign's
Sweetheart"; but his latest work, "Joints in our Social Armour,"
returned once more to that happier vein of picturesque description
which sat most easily and naturally upon him.

The essays which compose the present volume were contributed to the
columns of the _Family Herald_. And this is their history:--For
many years I had answered the correspondence and written the social
essays in that excellent little journal--a piece of work on which I
am not ashamed to say that I always look back with affectionate
pleasure. Several years since, however, I found myself compelled by
health to winter abroad, and therefore unable to continue my weekly
contributions. Who could fill up the gap? Who answer