My editorial career at Preston began with a somewhat painful and even dramatic episode. I had returned to the office, after my dinner with the commercial travellers, in order to attend to my duties for the day. The _Guardian_ was published twice a week--on Wednesday and Saturday. This was Tuesday afternoon. The proprietor had informed me that he was already provided with a leading article for Wednesday's publication, and my duties were therefore confined to the sub-editing of the news and the writing of a few editorial paragraphs. Suddenly Mr. Toulmin entered my room, and, without uttering a word, placed a telegram on the desk before me. It consisted of these words, still imprinted on my memory: "Washington Wilkes died suddenly last night while addressing a public meeting." I knew Mr. Wilkes by name as a Radical journalist of considerable ability, who wrote regularly for the _Morning Star_. Accordingly I expressed my regret on hearing of his death. "Yes," said Mr. Toulmin, bluntly; "that's all very well, but now you'll have to write the leader for to-morrow, for Wilkes was to have written it." Under these startling circumstances I penned my first leading article for the _Preston Guardian_. Though I thus stepped into the shoes of a dead man, I fear that I can hardly have filled them; but this was, on the whole, not to be wondered at. Mr. Toulmin, my new employer, was a man of marked character. Long before my business connection with him ceased, I learned to regard him with genuine respect and liking, and these feelings I entertained for him to the day of his death. But his somewhat rough exterior was not altogether prepossessing, and when I came to him first as a raw lad, shy, sensitive, and intolerant of manners that were foreign to my own, I must frankly confess that I felt repelled by him. Besides, I quickly discovered that I should have to fight my own battles if I wished to preserve my professional rights and dignity. I had been engaged as editor and sub-editor of the _Guardian_, and as it was my first editorship, it need hardly be said that I valued my position highly. Mr. Toulmin, I subsequently found, had a reputation for getting all he could out of the members of his staff without much regard to the customs of journalism. Thus, I had scarcely finished the article which would have been written by Washington Wilkes but for his sudden death, when Mr. Toulmin, coming into my room, expressed his warm satisfaction at the quickness with which I had turned out my work; then, with an almost paternal smile upon his face, he laid before me some pages of manuscript, and in an insinuating voice said: "Would you mind keeping your eye upon this whilst I run over this proof?" In an instant I grasped his meaning. I had been engaged as editor, and he proposed to fill up my spare time by employing me as a proof-reader. For a moment I was almost apoplectic with indignation at what I regarded as an outrage upon my dignity. To this day I am thankful