Before this time I had aroused Forster's anger--anger which never hurt--by the action I had taken, in common with some of my Liberal friends in Leeds, with regard to the School Board election. We found that the cumulative vote in a large constituency was almost unworkable. It had resulted in Leeds in the election, at the head of the poll on one occasion, of a mere demagogue of no account. In order to obviate any further misfortune of this kind my friend Mathers, the honorary secretary of the Liberal Association, devised a plan under which the town was divided by the Liberals into different divisions. To each of these divisions we allotted certain candidates, and we asked the electors who sympathised with us to vote only for the candidate allotted to the division in which they lived. The plan proved a brilliant success, for we carried all our candidates at that election, and this method of getting over the difficulties of the cumulative vote was afterwards adopted in all large towns, including London. Forster was greatly wroth at the time, and told me that he looked upon the scheme as a dishonest attempt to evade an Act of Parliament. Those were the years of the dynamite outrages. Certain desperate Irish societies, chiefly financed and recruited from the United States, were seeking to advance the Home Rule cause by terrorising the people of England. "Holy dynamite," as that powerful explosive was christened, was the weapon employed, and some very daring outrages were committed in London and other places. The most notable of these were the simultaneous attempts to wreck the House of Commons, Westminster Hall, and the Tower of London. These audacious crimes were committed on a Saturday afternoon. I spent the whole of the next morning reading and analysing the telegrams in which full details of the occurrences were given, and in writing an article for Monday's _Mercury_ on the subject. In the afternoon I went over to Wakefield to keep an engagement I had made to dine and sleep at Thorns, the residence of my friends Mr. and Lady Catherine Milnes Gaskell. I well remember the scene when I entered the beautiful library at Thorns, about five o'clock. There was a large party there, including the Duke and Duchess of St. Albans, Mr. and Mrs. Goschen, and Mr. W B. Beaumont, of Bretton.