The newspapers, when it became evident that the siege of Paris was, after all, destined to take place, had to adopt measures to secure correspondents who were prepared to endure the hardships of that siege in order to furnish information to the British public. The most famous of these correspondents was Mr. Labouchere, who furnished the _Daily News_ with the most entertaining journal of a siege ever written by a besieged resident. On behalf of the _Leeds Mercury_ I engaged the services of another well-known journalist to act as our representative during the siege. This gentleman very naturally required a considerable sum of money in advance for his maintenance during the investment. He had written one or two admirable letters in anticipation of the siege, and I cheerfully sent him the amount for which he asked. He received it just before the Prussian lines closed round Paris, and I do not remember that I ever heard from him again. The letters which it is to be presumed he wrote to the _Leeds Mercury_ never reached that journal. When the investment began, and Paris was cut off from the outer world, we onlookers with the strip of sea between had certain visible signs of the reality of the siege offered to us in our very midst. The front page of the _Times_ furnished one of these signs. Day after day, for weeks at a stretch, the whole of that page was occupied by messages from the French outside Paris to their friends and relatives within the walls. At first English readers were puzzled by this phenomenon. The investment of the city was very strict, and it was difficult to understand how the newspaper could be smuggled inside the barriers; but presently the truth was made known. This page of the _Times_ was part of the machinery of the famous pigeon post which connected the outside world with Paris during its long beleaguerment. The page was photographed on a microscopic scale. The film on which the photograph was printed was carried into Paris by a pigeon, a magic-lantern was used to enlarge the photograph, and the messages it contained were copied by Post Office officials, and forwarded to their different destinations. Such a postal service was, I imagine, unique. It was certainly most ingenious. Another sign of the siege of Paris was presented during those bright autumn days by the appearance of Piccadilly, especially on a Sunday afternoon. I generally spent Sunday in London, and during that autumn, when walking on a Sunday in Piccadilly, I noticed more than once that the majority of the well-dressed persons promenading on the northern side of the street were Frenchmen--most of them wearing the ribbon of the Legion of Honour. They were chiefly Imperialists, for whom there was no place in France under the new _régime_, and they had flocked to London literally in thousands, so that the great West End thoroughfare resounded at times with the French tongue.