Another of the “young lions” who roared in the Peterborough Court menagerie was Drew Gay. Phil Robinson perched for a while on the staff, and flitted elsewhere. All those I have named have finished their accounts with this world. Bennet Burleigh still lives, a prosperous gentleman, and the doyen of war-correspondents. Burleigh professed strong Socialistic principles at a time when they were regarded by respectable people as the most damnable heresies. My first experience of a Socialist Club was gained through Bennet Burleigh. He introduced me one night to the Social Democratic Club. This select association held its meetings in the cellars of a new building in Chancery Lane. One had to dive down two flights of stone steps to the subterranean rooms of the club. The rooms were full of gaunt, long-haired men of both home and foreign growth, and women in clinging (and not very cleanly) raiment. Whiskies and sodas were hospitably dispensed, and most of the women were smoking cigarettes and trying to look as though they were quite used to it and liked it. I encountered Dr. Tanner, the Member for Mid-Cork. He introduced me to a bright, interesting old lady, whose name I forget. We had an edifying chat, she and I, and when, a few nights afterwards, I met Tanner in the Lobby of the House of Commons, I asked him about the lady to whom he had introduced me. “Oh,” replied Tanner good-humouredly, “that was the celebrated Madeline Smith. She is a married woman now.” “You don’t mean Madeline Smith, the murderess?” I asked. “I mean Madeline Smith, who was _tried_ for murder, and for whom the jury found a Scotch verdict of ‘Not proven,’” he reminded me. “And of such is the Social Democratic Club?” I observed. “Que voulez-vous?” said Tanner, shrugging his shoulders. But I have wandered somewhat wide of the matter in hand, which was to afford a little idea of the principal members of the staff among whom Robert Williams became enrolled. Fleet Street—the thoroughfare itself, I mean—has undergone considerable change since those days. Nearly all the Dickens features have been shorn away from it, and the Dickens-land that impinged upon it has ceased to be recognizable. From the West we then entered Fleet Street through Temple Bar. In the north wing of that historic but obstructive gateway an old barber plied his calling. He reminded me of Mr. Krook in “Bleak House.” He was never what you would call quite sober. His face was blotched and fiery with his excesses, and his hand that held the razor trembled so violently that one wondered how he got through the day without wounding some of his customers. Once the operation commenced, however, the trembling ceased, and the razor sped unerring, steady, expert. What became of the old fellow when Temple Bar was taken down I have never heard. He would hardly, I imagine, have survived his disestablishment.