A year or two since I saw the death of the hero of the “Fourteen Flags” announced in the _Daily Telegraph_. It was followed by quite a flattering obituary notice of the deceased officer. His many deeds of valour were referred to in terms which must have made all his friends regret that the tribute should have been delayed till the man himself was no longer alive to read it. I have quoted above the initials G.O.M. as applied to Mr. Gladstone, and standing, of course, for “Grand Old Man.” Another and less reverent reading of the initials was given by one of Gladstone’s most devoted supporters, Mr. Labouchere. It must have been at a time when the doctors had stopped “Henry’s” cigarettes, or perhaps during one of those periods of shuffling the Ministerial cards when Labouchere felt annoyed at having his claims to office once more disregarded. Whatever the cause, to Mr. Henry Labouchere was quite rightly attributed the translation of G.O.M. into “God’s only mistake!” Another of the regular members of the Ansdell circle was Morgan Evans. Evans was as good a fellow and as sound a journalist as ever tempted fortune in the Street of Adventure. But, like many a cultured man, he drifted into the wrong line—wrong, I mean, in so far as money-making is concerned. In journalism, as in other professions, that man makes most who specializes in certain subjects. Now, the subject on which Evans had specialized was scientific dairy-farming. In this study, his friendship with Professor Duguid and other leading lights in the veterinary world was of considerable service to him. The admirable series of articles which he contributed to the _Field_ created widespread interest among those for whose edification they were written, and Evans might have gone on for ever treating on that subject and cognate ones in the _Field_ and other papers dealing with agriculture. Such a course meant abundance of work at special rates. But Morgan Evans was a dreamer, and preferred the position of a free-lance writing spasmodically on general topics to that of the highly paid regular contributor on scientific or semi-scientific subjects.