uced me to John Bright. I do not
think I ventured to take any share in the conversation between the two,
but I recall one interesting passage of it "Tell me, friend George,"
said Bright, "you have, I suppose, as large an experience in public
speaking as any man in England. Have you any acquaintance with the old
nervous tremor still?" "No," said Dawson, "or if I have, it is a mere
momentary qualm which is gone before I can realise it." "Now, for my
part," said the great Tribune, "I have had practice enough but I have
never risen to address an audience, large or small, without experiencing
a shaking at the knees and the sense of a scientific vacuum behind the
waistcoat."

When I enlisted under Dawson's banner, on the _Birmingham Morning News_,
I was the junior reporter, but in the course of a month or two, I was
promoted and became the recognised descriptive writer on the staff.
Throughout my journalistic experience I have been fortunate in one
respect. The men under whom I have worked have, for the most part, had
the knack of extorting one's best, and one of the ways of extorting the
best of an enthusiastic youngster is to let him know cordially when he
has done well. I shall never forget the flush of resolve which came
over me when Dawson first laid his hand upon my shoulder with a cheery
"Bravo, my lad," in acknowledgment of a piece of work of mine. It was
the first really great chance I had had. I was just newly married at the
time and supposing my work to be over for the day I was taking my way
homeward, when the printer's "devil" overtook me after a breathless run
and told me that I was wanted at the office. I went back to learn that
there was a mine on fire at Black Lake, some seven miles away, and I was
bidden to go and see what was to be seen there.

A hasty search through the time-table showed that there was no train
running in that direction for an hour or two and so I was bidden to take
a hansom and to use all despatch. The scene of the disaster lay a mile
or two past the house in which I was born, and by the time at which
I reached this point I could see that the tale was true. It was a
perfectly still and windless evening with an opalescent sky, and far
away I could see a great column of smoke rising like the stem of a giant
mushroom and over it a canopy of smoke like the mushroom's top, and as
I drew near I could see that the lower part of the column was faintly
irradiated by the flames at the bottom of th