My reporting experiences at Newcastle were as varied as those of most journalists. One day I would be listening to a bishop's charge; the next, in some beautiful spot in the valley of the North Tyne, I would be professing to criticise shorthorns at a cattle show, and on the third day it might be my misfortune to have to be present at an execution. Colliery accidents, boat races (for which the Tyne has long been famous), performances at the theatre--all these came within the scope of my duty. It was admirable training, and has turned out many a good journalist. Always to be on the alert, so that no important item of news should be missed by my paper; always to be ready to reel off a column of readable "copy" on any subject whatever; always to be prepared for any duty that might turn up--these were among the necessary qualifications for my post. Then, as the _Journal_ was short-handed, it sometimes fell to my lot to undertake tasks which usually lie outside the reporter's sphere. Sometimes I had to take a turn at sub-editing, and sometimes I had even to write a leader. My first attempt at leader-writing for the _Journal_ was on a momentous occasion--the death of the Prince Consort. This was an event which for a time lightened my duties considerably. All public festivities were suspended; meetings of every kind were put off, and for a space of some weeks the country was spared the infliction of reading reports of speeches. It was just about a month after the death of the Prince Consort that the most notable incident connected with my career as a reporter at Newcastle occurred. This was the terrible disaster at the Hartley New Pit, a colliery some fifteen miles from Newcastle, near the bleak Northumberland coast. The accident was of a peculiar character, and it excited an extraordinary amount of public interest. Up to that time it had been lawful to work coal mines with a single shaft, so that there was only one possible mode of egress for the men at work in the pit. Hartley was one of these single shaft collieries, and on the morning of Thursday, January 17th, 1862, more than two hundred men and boys were suddenly made prisoners in the workings by the blocking of this shaft. The beam of a pumping engine erected directly over the mouth of the pit broke, and one half of the beam--a piece of metal weighing some fifteen tons--fell down the shaft. It tore down the sides in its descent, and finally lodged at a point above the seam in which the men were working, with an immense mass of _débris_ from the shaft walls piled above it.