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