Part 3 (1/2)

But he could be as generous in praise as savage in condemnation, and his occasional lapses into tenderness of ht at the Church of the Saviour, after his return from a holiday in Rome, when he told us how he had purposely lost himself in the viler quarters of the city The noon-day sun beat down, eliciting aboly squalors of the region He walked on right into the country, strolled on the Ca like the saarish sun was down The evening dews had laid the foul odours The liness was turned to beauty Vile things were transfigured in that softening light ”Christianity,” he said, ”is the , but Daas a creature of intimations He startled one sometimes by an intellectual crudity, but he had always reserve

There areeloquence and devotion of those improvised prayers of his at the Church of the Saviour Old e Gilfillan, by the way, author of the _Bards of the Bible_ and other deservedly neglected works, wrote to Dahen his congregation built this church for him: ”You have started the Church of the Saviour, but you will never be a saviour to the church” To which the other George fittingly responded ”that the Church had its Saviour already and it was a plain ”

But those prayers! They were the , sane soul towards an infinite hope, an infinite possible good, a great half-revealed Fatherhood Doubt faltered there, hope exulted I have not heard froain--such an expression of humble hope and doubt, such a tone of complete abasement before the Divine Ideal, such a final triumphant note of praise in the far-off haven to which creation moves

The best result of the life of my dear old chief was the effect he had upon the ham It was not then a city in those days to which he devoted so large a portion of his reat communities Not so endowed as to co of the areatness in its wider spheres, they gain in force by the very limits of the current to which they coo by before the capital of the Midlands wholly forgets the influence of the man whose character I have so feebly indicated here, as to its teehthouse of honesty, and who still seems to me, after the lapse of all these years, the bravest, the sincerest and the most eloquent soul it has been my fortune to encounter I owed to hi politicians of the town John Skirrow Wright--of who, noisy, vehement, jovial man, whom the phrase accurately fitted; Dr R W Dale, the Archbishop of the Nonconformists of his day and many others

On one ht 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 ht, ”you have, I suppose, as large an experience in public speaking as any land Have you any acquaintance with the old nervous tremor still?” ”No,” said Dawson, ”or if I have, it is a one before I can realise it” ”Now, for h but I have never risen to address an audience, large or s at the knees and the sense of a scientific vacuum behind the waistcoat”

When I enlisted under Dawson's banner, on the _Bir News_, I was the junior reporter, but in the course of a nised 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 theone's best, and one of the ways of extorting the best of an enthusiastic youngster is to let hiet the flush of resolve which came over me when Dawson first laid his hand upon reat chance I had had I was just newlymy way homeward, when the printer's ”devil” overtook me after a breathless run and told me that I anted at the office I went back to learn that there was a mine on fire at Black Lake, soo and see as to be seen there

A hasty search through the ti 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 coluiant 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 the pit shaft The mine was situated in thecrowd about it which made way for me at a word Round about the bed shafts of the mine, the downcast and the upcast, a little space was held voluntarily clear and half a dozenthere A little tin pot of an engine in aat a little distance, and alreat iron bucket capable of containing as I should judge soht from the upcast, lowered there, set upon a trolley and then run along the rails until it could be e

This poor atteuish the flames was continued for perhaps a quarter of an hour, but at last one of the little band said, ”This is no good, lads, weand spit at it

We shall have to get the 'Stinktors' out A o down” The coal-sether and they looked at each other with faces pale beneath the grime For a second or two none of them spoke, but at last one said, ”Will you make one?” and the first rowl

The others were appealed to each in turn, and each gave the sa acquiescence I had at the moment no idea as to what it was actually proposed to do, but the plan was soon made clear What the first speaker had called ”stinktors” turned out to be little barrel-shaped objects about one foot by two

They were called ”l'extincteur,” and they contained soas which in combination ater was fatal to fire But when I reflected that in a confined space like that into which they proposed to venture, any gas which was fatal to fire would in all probability be fatal to human life, I almost wondered if the men were mad Mad or no, they made their preparations with a deliberate swiftness which showed that they knew perfectly hat they were about The man who had first proposed the venture was the first to set out upon it The large iron bucket, technically called ”boas attached to the steel wire rope which hung about the s shaft The man stepped into this, the chain was passed about his waist, he was smothered in heavy flannels which were tied about hi coil of dirty, oily, coaly, three-ply tas fastened round his right wrist, and he ung into the sine-rooan to pant and snort 30 or 40 yards away and the ht The coal-se of the twine paid it out delicately fathom by fathom It was the only link between the adventurer down below and the chance of life, and theat it would have caused an iht hi that anybody there could have told, the ht have been suffocated by the s of the wheel as it revolved above the shaft and the hoarse panting of the little engine, and the crohich had by this tirown to vast di awful in it

How long aited I cannot tell, but at last the signal caine roo swiftly upwards The hero was co all limp and loose by the chain which had been passed about his waist He was seized, swung to one side and lowered and landed and one great fiery flake of flannel as big as a arments in which he athed from head to foot A bottle of whisky came from somewhere and was put to his lips and in a while he recovered consciousness though he was still gasping and choking and his eyes were streaood as he, was ready, and he came back, as it turned out afterwards, blinded for life, but neither that nor anything that fear could urge could stay the rest, and man after man went down and faced that lurid smoke and hell of darkness undisht out every iant yelled, ”That's the lot,” when the last batch ca mad I have seen many deeds of valour into e

I feel inclined to say less about the courage displayed by the members of the next rescue party whose work I saw, for the very sufficient reason that I was a member of it To tell the honest truth, I had not the reer At the Pelsall Hall colliery, which lay two or three miles from Walsall, there had been an inrush of water fros near at hand, and twenty-two miners were imprisoned The water filled the shaft to a depth of sixty feet, and so the rescuers were really hopeless of being able to pump the mine clear before the prisoners had been reduced to a state of absolute starvation There was always the certainty that the inrush of water would be followed by an influx of poisonous gases This, in fact, proved to be the case, and every man had been dead a week before the first body was recovered

I began an it in a rather curious fashi+on The place was a wretched little e with a solitary beer shop in it, and there was only one house in which it was possible to secure decent accoreed to pay hiht for the accoele bedroo of the other's bargain until the followingForbes was under the belief that an atteht, and that it was to break into an old abandoned air-hich had long been bricked up at the side of the shaft, and was believed to lead to the stables of the mine which were situated at a point above the level of the flood

The dialect of the Black Country, when spoken at its broadest, is not easy for a stranger to understand I, as a native of the district, was of course faether, andperfectly well that the intended attempt could not be made for at least twenty-four hours, went aith a coe When I left the door next riure It was, after all, a rimy shi+rt, ore heavy ankle Jack-boots, and had his trousers rolled above his ankles This person accosted e there?” he asked ht be” He told me he had hired and paid for the only available bed in the house from the landlady, and I told hih the landlord The stranger claih to tell e upon his privileges he would take the liberty of throwing me out of the as five-and-twenty at this time, stood five feet eleven in ood ht to be, and in considerable wrath at the stranger's insolence, I drew myself up shoulder to shoulder with hiht play at There caleam into his eye, and when he looked at hter ”Newspaper man?”

he asked me I answered in the affirmative, and he stretched out an unwashed hand ”I am Forbes,” he said ”I am here for the _Daily News_; if I can't bully a man I make friends with him”

Now Forbes for years had been one of hted to meet him We struck up an immediate friendshi+p but in an hour he turned into bed and I saw hi when I believed that I had made of him an enemy for life I learned at the mine head the hour at which the rescue party was to descend and I ements to join it Then I walked in to Walsall and there hired a saddle horse which I bestowed in the stables of the beer shop This done, I made my way back to the mine and found the party just in readiness to make the descent There were six of us, all told, and the little contingent was captained by Mr Walter Neas, who, partly as a reward for gallantry as I believe, was afterwards appointed er of Her Majesty's mines in Warora, Central India We were all lowered in a skip together and the position of the air-way having been precisely ascertained one h the brickith a pick The sullen waters of the pool were only soht or ten feet beneath us The bricks splashed in one after the other until there was a space large enough for a man to whirl hie It was a tremendous scramble, and here and there the roof of the place had sunk so low that we had hard work to squeeze through on our hands and knees

In places we had alht We came at last upon a face of brick, the wall of the stable for which ere bound and beyond which there was so the imprisoned h we paused th broken doe entered the stable and I was the first of the party to perceive the dead body of afor all the world like a ork figure

I was holding a candle to the dead ht went out suddenly as if it had been quenched in water In a second ere in pitch darkness and our leader called out ”Choke damp--back for your lives,” and in the pitchy darkness back we struggled I have forgotten to say that water was running down the air-way like a little h it was barely over shoe-tops

We scra us, sucked and drawn along by the draught of air I was last but one and was saved many of the bruises and excoriations which befell the leader The warning voice would come out of the darkness, ”duck here,” or ”hands and knees,” and on we toiled, panting and perspiring, until we reached the shaft and were all drawn up again I driedfire in the hovel of the mine and then made all haste to the beer shop where I haht and the press was already clanking when I rode into Pinfold Street and sat down, all muddy and dishevelled as I was, to dictate my copy to a shorthand writer What I had to say filled two large type columns and with the copy of the paper in my pocket, I rode back to Pelsall There I found Forbes at breakfast--he asked where I had been and I produced the paper and showed h without a word of coood, bad or indifferent, laid it down upon the table and left the roo about in the chamber overhead and by and by he came doith a portmanteau in his hand and without a word or a look left the house I thought that he was galled to feel that he had been beaten by a novice

Two years had elapsed when I ate Bar, which was then a great resort of the biggera knot of his companions

Tom Hood was there as I remember, and Henry Sampson, founder of the _Referee_ with Major Henty, the fa Evelyn Jerrold Forbes greetedfrom his seat, clapped me upon the back He took me to his friends and introduced me ords that put me to the blush

”Here,” said he, ”is a lish, and here is the only round” ”No,” I answered, ”it was round, Mr Forbes, and I should not have beaten you if you had spoken the language of the natives” I never had a better or enerous friend than Forbes

The _World_ Journal, founded by Ed into its first dawn of success Forbes had been asked to write a series of articles for it on a subject which, as he confessed, had no particular charave her journalis far ahead now and there is iti Neas a financial failure from the first, and towards the end of its second year its proprietors determined to reconstruct it How or by whom they were advised I never knew, but a person who had no acquaintance either with finance or with journalism was entrusted with the coeon

I had fully intended to resign with hiiven me in which to do it, and in the space of a feeeks after the arrival of the newcoood offices of the late Charles Willia Advertiser_, I was introduced to Colonel Richards, the editor of that journal, and did actually secure a berth as gallery reporter, but I was suddenly called back to the country by a grave domestic trouble, no less than the illness of97 Recollections later When I returned to London my place was filled and for a while the outlook was extrein with, and in spite of all the care I could exercise they dwindled at an appalling rate I abode in a shabby little back bedroo off the Gray's Inn Road and sat at , whilst I wrote, and sent broadcast prose and verse, essays, short stories, journalistic trifles of every kind All were ignored or returned