The newspaper reporter has still, in the discharge of his duty, to see many strange and painful things, but he is now spared some of the most trying sights to which he was exposed in my reporting days. Among these, none was so painful and so revolting as a public execution. I attended several executions during my connection with the Newcastle Press, and I was a witness in 1868 of the last public execution in England--that of Barrett, the Fenian, of whom I shall have more to say by-and-by. I am thankful to know that the necessity of attendance at these dreadful scenes is no longer imposed upon the journalist, and I feel a profound pity for those officials who are compelled by an imperative duty to be present at the private strangling of their fellow-creatures. It is true, however, that use hardens the heart and deadens the nerves. I remember how, on the first occasion of witnessing an execution, as I stood trembling at the foot of the scaffold on which the victim was about to appear, I noticed an old reporter, for whom I entertained a great personal respect, pacing up and down beside me, reading the New Testament. In the passion of horror and pity that filled my young heart, I concluded that my friend was seeking spiritual comfort in view of the event in which we were about to take part as spectators and recorders. I said something to him about the horror of the act we were shortly to witness. He looked up with a placid smile from his reading, and said gently--for he was essentially a gentle man--"Yes, very sad, very sad; but let us be thankful it isn't raining." And then he calmly returned to his daily reading of the Word. If even gentle hearts can thus grow callous, what must be the "moral effect" of an execution upon those who are already brutalised? Another unpleasant sight which reporters are now spared is the flogging of garrotters. When the Act authorising this punishment was passed, provision was made that the representatives of the Press should be present when it was inflicted. More than once I have had to witness these floggings in the course of my ordinary duty. I confess that they did not affect me as they seemed to affect most of my colleagues. An execution, with the violent thrusting of a human soul into the unknown, moved me deeply; but the physical punishment of a ruffian who had himself inflicted atrocious suffering upon some innocent person seemed to be such well-deserved retribution that even the coward's shrieks for mercy made no impression upon my nerves; and yet I have seen reporters who could laugh and joke at an execution faint at the flogging of a garrotter. So differently are human beings constituted!