My stay in London was brought to an end in the early part of 1870, amid circumstances that changed the whole tenor of my life, and for a time left me a crippled and wounded man. I have said nothing in these pages of my private life or my domestic happiness. My marriage had proved to be, in all respects save one, everything that the heart of man could desire. The one drawback was my wife's delicate health; but she had shown such marvellous recuperative powers at times when the doctors had spoken in the gravest manner of her case, and she possessed so unfailing a flow of natural good spirits, that it was impossible for one who, perhaps, saw only that which he desired to see, to believe that her case was hopeless. Yet hopeless it really was during the whole of the two short years of her married life. Her death--it took place on the 4th of February--was a blow that seemed to shatter my own life to its very foundations. I cannot dwell upon it, unless it be to say that at that time of unspeakable sorrow I first learned the value of human sympathy, and made the discovery that there are, happily, in this world not a few men and women who seem to have the gift of being able, not indeed to remove, but to share and to lighten the burdens of their fellow-creatures. It is only those who have gone through such an ordeal as this of mine who can fully understand all that human sympathy may be in that hour of darkest woe when a man, still standing on the threshold of life, finds himself alone in a world which to him has suddenly become an empty desert. One incident, and one only, of those days I will venture to recall. I was walking along the Strand in the blackest hours of my misery, when I saw an old man approaching me whose depth of mourning showed that he had sustained the same bereavement as myself. There was probably a difference of fifty years in our ages, but we were alike in the sacred kinship of sorrow. As he drew near me I saw his eyes fixed upon mine with a long look of tenderness and sympathy that went to my very heart, and comforted me subtly. I envied him his age, which seemed to bring him so much nearer to the end. I do not think he envied me my youth. It was but for a moment that we were thus drawn to each other in the crowded street--"ships that passed in the night," in the darkest night, indeed; but that moment I have never forgotten. CHAPTER VII. EDITOR OF THE _LEEDS MERCURY_. Forming Good Resolutions--Provincial Journalism in the 'Seventies-- Recollections of the Franco-German War--The Loss of the _Captain_ and its Consequences to me--Settling Down at Leeds--Acquaintance with Monckton Milnes--Visits to Fryston--Lord Houghton's Chivalry--His Talk--His Skill in Judging Men--Stories about George Venables--Lord Houghton's Regard for Religious Observances.