In accordance with its usual custom, time rolled on. I began to exhibit a taste for painting, and my brother Weedon for acting. These professions we subsequently reversed. Weedon (his full name is Walter Weedon Grossmith) left the North London Collegiate School to go to school nearer home; viz., Mr. Simpson's, in Belsize Park. Eventually I left the N.L.C.S. to go to Bow Street, with the ultimate intention of entering for the bar; and Weedon, after leaving school, went to the West London School of Art in Portland Street, also to the Slade School at the London University, and eventually he passed the requisite examination that admitted him to the Royal Academy Schools. I have endeavoured to make this little sketch of my old home as brief as possible, and will conclude this chapter with an incident that ultimately happened to be of considerable importance to me: At a certain juvenile party, while still in jackets and turned-down collars, I met and became enamoured of a little maiden in a short frock and sash. She flattered me by approving of my comic songs; and I was immensely struck with her power of conversation, which was unusual for one so young. I ascertained that her name was Emmeline Rosa Noyce, and that she was the only daughter of Doctor Noyce, whose practice was in the neighbourhood. We danced every dance together; but the Fates decreed that we should not meet again for another three or four years. We _did_ meet--in a crowd, and again danced _nearly_ every dance together; for, strange to say, she understood my step. All this was simply a beginning to a very happy end: and I can say with truth that the wisest step I ever took in the whole course of my life was when, on the 14th May, 1873, I made my juvenile sweetheart my wife--with her consent, of course,--and, thank God, I have never had reason to regret it for a single second. CHAPTER III. At Bow Street Police Court. "Take down our sentence as we speak it."--_Iolanthe_. For a period of twenty years I had the distinguished honour of being decidedly "well known to the police." When I between seventeen and eighteen years of age, and still at the North London Collegiate School, I received instructions from my father, who was just starting for Liverpool, that as Mr. Courtenay was ill I must go and "do" Bow Street. Mr. John Kelly Courtenay used to do all the reporting at Bow Street Police Court during my father's absence on his lecturing tours. I had learned shorthand (the Lewisian system, I believe it was called) some two or three years previously.