But enough of my own feelings. The readiness with which I adapted myself to my new surroundings, the zest with which I entered into the friendships of my new comrades, certainly indicated that I had something, at all events, of the Bohemian in my nature. Of the public events of that year, 1861, there is comparatively little to be said. I remember, indeed, that I happened to be acting for the first time as sub-editor in the temporary absence of my friend, Mr. Lowes, when I received a telegram announcing that the first shot had been fired in the American War. Some two or three months later Newcastle was favoured with a visit from Lord John Russell, who had recently accepted an earldom. He was entertained at a great banquet in the Town Hall, whereat all the Whig notabilities of the North of England assembled to do him honour. Now, in my days, provincial reporters were an unsophisticated race. To a young journalist, living in Newcastle, the journalism of London seemed so remote and unattainable that it might as well have been in another planet. The sight of a reporter for one of the London dailies was awe-inspiring, and the notion of being called upon to work in the company of so august a being almost took one's breath away. It fell out that at the Russell banquet it was arranged that his speech should be reported in short "turns" by the whole body of reporters present. This is an arrangement now, I believe, in universal use, the object being to get the report out quickly. But in 1861 it was almost unknown on the provincial press, and this was my first experience of it. Perhaps I was unnerved by the presence of a couple of _Times_ reporters, or perhaps my knowledge of shorthand was not then all that it should have been. Be this as it may, I have to confess with regret that in reporting my turn of the great statesman's speech I made one woeful blunder. Lord Russell said (I quote from memory) that we saw now in the New World that which had so often been seen in the Old--a struggle on the one side for empire and on the other for independence. Now in the system of shorthand which I had learned, the word "independence" is represented by an arbitrary symbol, consisting of two dots, one above the other, like a colon. When I came to write out my turn, I found to my horror that the signification of this particular symbol had escaped my memory. There it was, staring me in the face from my note-book, but what it meant for my very life I could not at the moment tell. And the telegraph messengers were pestering me for my copy, and, worst of all, the reporters from London seemed to my guilty conscience to be eyeing me askance, and wondering what the delay meant. In a desperate moment I made a guess, not at the meaning of my symbol, but at some word which might take its place, and possibly pass unnoticed; so I represented Lord Russell as having said that we saw in the New World, what we had often seen in the old, a