I confess I was very sorry for him. He started well by telling a story about an experience of his when visiting the United States. He was entertained at dinner by some New York club, not, I imagine, a literary one, and the president proposed his health in gushing terms, the peroration of the speech being, "I now ask you, gentlemen, to drink to the health of the greatest of living novelists, Mr. William Black, the author of that immortal work, 'Lorna Doone.'" Now this is an excellent story, and if Black had only been able to tell it, he would have delighted his audience, and would have secured a very genuine triumph. But alas! the acoustic properties of the Egyptian Hall are, to say the least of it, not good, and Black was so nervous that he was almost inaudible, more especially when he reached the point of his little tale. The result was that to the vast majority of those who heard him, his speech seemed to be a simple announcement of the fact that he had once been described at a dinner in New York as the greatest of living novelists. Happily, Black was not dependent upon his oratorical gifts for his power of influencing the public. When Bret Harte visited me at Leeds in the early 'eighties, his arrival caused what the reporters describe as a "sensation" in the town. To begin with, Harte had not been long resident in this country, and the author of "The Heathen Chinee" was still something of a mythical personage to the average Englishman. Then he still affected the style of dress which Buffalo Bill afterwards made familiar, and with his broad sombrero hat, his flowing locks, and ample fur-lined overcoat, cut a conspicuous figure in the streets. It is no exaggeration to say that everybody turned to look at him, and that more than once he had a small mob at his heels. Greatly interested, like most of his fellow-countrymen, in the story of the Brontës, he got me to accompany him on a pilgrimage to Haworth, to see the world-famed parsonage and church. Shortly before this time, I had been concerned in raising an agitation against the destruction of the church, and had, in consequence, incurred the hostility of the incumbent, a certain Mr. Wade, who was anxious to replace the venerable fabric in which the Brontës had worshipped for so many years by a handsome modern edifice. Mr. Shepard, the American Consul at Bradford, was the companion of Harte and myself in our visit; but somewhat to our annoyance, we were joined at a wayside station by a young man, who was known to Shepard, and who seemed very anxious to accompany a celebrity like Bret Harte. We duly reached the grey old village among the moors, and for the last time I saw the quaint interior of Haworth Church, and sat once more in Charlotte Brontë's seat in the old-fashioned pew at the foot of the clumsy three-decker pulpit.