As free-lance, as a member of a “staff,” as special correspondent, as leader-writer, book-reviewer, and dramatic critic, my experience has been considerable, and I have generally found my work delightful; but its greatest charm, after all, has been in the society of the comrades whom I have met by the way. Good-fellowship, loyalty to one another, a fine sense of chivalry, a constant readiness to help the lame dog over the style, a stern ostracism of the unhappy wight who evinced a congenital inability to play the game—these were the characteristics of the men of my time. Sitting down in the afternoon of my day to recall that pleasant past, I now, as I intimated in my opening chapter, drop all pretence of sequent autobiography, and proceed to present such groups and incidents, such characters and scenes, such _mots_ and anecdotes, as may appeal to those who live in another time and pursue their calling under other conditions. CHAPTER V SOCIETY JOURNALISM “Sassiaty is Sassiaty: its lors ar irresistibl.”—_Yellowplush Papers_. SOCIETY journalism had been founded just before I began to earn a “living wage” in Fleet Street, but its development and popularity were items of later history. The ball was set rolling by Mr. Thomas Gibson Bowles—to become known in other times as the intractable Conservative Member of Parliament, and the beloved “Tommy” Bowles of the man in the street. The familiar sobriquet only got into print after Bowles captured King’s Lynn in the Tory interest, but he was called by that playful diminutive long before he entered the House of Commons, although he himself was probably unaware, as he would certainly resent, the fact. Pottinger Stephens bestowed upon him the familiar name, and in Fleet Street and the Strand he was always known to his Press contemporaries as “Tommy.”