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he Press Gallery. In addition to his official duties at the door, Wright, in his private capacity, added those of purveyor. Every Monday he brought down (in two red cotton pocket-handkerchiefs, it was profanely said) a round of cold boiled beef and a chunk of boiled ham; the latter tending, if memory serves, rather towards the shank end. This, with bread, cheese, and bottled beer, was the sole provision for the sustenance of the sixty or seventy gentlemen who then composed the corps of the Press Gallery. At that time it was more widely the practice to go out to dinner or supper. But for those whose duties kept them in close attendance on the gallery there was nothing for it but cold beef, cold ham, or an amalgamation carefully doled forth. Many a night, seated at the little table that still remains in this outer room, I have watched Wright prepare my sumptuous repast. He was even then short-sighted, and to this day I have vivid recollection of the concern with which I saw his nose approach to dangerous contiguity of the round of beef as he leaned over it to cut a slice with judicious thinness. [Illustration: CUTTING THE BEEF.] [Illustration: LORD CHARLES RUSSELL.] Even this accommodation was regarded askance by the constitutional authorities of the House, still accustomed to regard the Press as an intruder happily subject, under the beneficent regulations of the Stuart days, to instant expulsion if any member pleased to take note of the presence of its representatives. In 1867, a Committee sat to consider the general arrangements of the House. The reporters, greatly daring, took the opportunity of laying before it a statement of their grievances, and asked for fuller convenience for carrying on their work. Lord Charles Russell, then Serjeant-at-Arms, was, very properly, astonished at their unreasonableness, and plaintively deplored the times when, as he put it, reporters seemed to require only the necessaries of life, not presuming to lift their eyes to its luxuries. "They used, I am told," Lord Charles added, "to have just a glass of water and biscuits, or anything of that sort. Now they have their tea at the back of the gallery." [Illustration: MR. DAVID PLUNKET.] Oliver Twist asking for more scarcely reached the height of the audacity of these reporters in 1867. Like Mr. Bumble, the Serjeant-at-Arms of the day literally gasped in dismayed astonishment. All this is changed. Thanks to the courtesy and re
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