In that same smoking-room there used frequently to meet a little coterie of journalists, among whom were Tom Dunning, one of the most respected men in “the Gallery”; H. H. S. Pearse, special correspondent of the _Daily News_; and Charles Williams, war-correspondent of many dailies in succession: for Charles, although an accomplished journalist, had an Irish temper, and frequently “quarrelled with his bread and butter.” I have met many eminent romancers in my time. Charlie Williams could have given Baron Munchausen a stone and a beating. He spoke with a rasping North of Ireland accent, and his campaign anecdotes gained greatly by the stolid, matter-of-fact manner in which they were narrated. I recall now one of his campaign reminiscences. It is a quaint experience of a correspondent under fire. “I had got under cover of a big boulder, and had tethered my horse beside me. I was just munchin’ a beskit, when a shall burst on the rock, an’ shot the nosebag right off my charger. He had shoved his daumned ould head out of cover.” “And you?” asked Pearse. “I just went on munchin’ my beskit.” “But,” suggested Dunning, “if the shell took away the nosebag, it ought to have carried away the beast’s head as well.” “_It did_!” replied Williams, with the utmost sang-froid. In the same place, but on another occasion, I heard him aver with the utmost solemnity that he had been selected by the Liberal party to oppose Sir Hugh M’Calmont Cairns, when that eminent man—afterwards Earl Cairns—first stood for Belfast in the Conservative interest. “Ef,” declared Charlie, “I’d stud against Sir Hugh when first he put up for Bel-fawst, there’d be no such a personage now as Lord Cairns, Lord High Chawncellor of England!” He was a bit of a romancer, was Williams. It should be admitted, however, that Williams did, at a later period in his career, stand as a candidate for Imperial Parliament. He opposed Herbert Gladstone at Leeds.