Affecting to ignore the financial aspect which our brief acquaintance had suddenly assumed, I carelessly let fall the remark that I had seen Mr. Alfred Parsons yesterday at the Arts Club, to which I added the suggestion that he might deem it convenient under the circumstances to quit the house. His bright candid eyes met mine for an instant, and then, as though by a flash of lightning, he was down the stairs and in the street. I think it must have been this same young gentleman who only a year or two later visited Irving at the Lyceum Theatre during the rehearsal of one of his plays. In that case he represented himself as the nephew of Mr. Child, a friend of Irving’s who had recently set up a monument at Stratford-on-Avon; but in substance the story was the same. There also he sought nothing but the pleasure of shaking Irving by the hand, and it was only at the moment of parting that he asked for a letter of introduction to the Mayor of Stratford, that he might not appear quite a stranger in the town whither he was bound in order to inspect his uncle’s gift. But in this case he was more successful, for that coveted £50, which my niggard spirit had denied him, he managed, upon the strength of Irving’s letter, to extract from Stratford’s Mayor. From him he received another letter of introduction to Mr. Chamberlain, but here, as I am glad to think, with no damaging financial result. It is only fair to add, as a finish to this brief and interesting episode of an enterprising adventurer, that Mr. Child, indignant of the use that had been made of his name, afterwards insisted upon repaying the amount that had been nefariously borrowed. My work for the _Manchester Guardian_ sometimes took me far afield, and in the year 1882, when the city of Manchester was contemplating a reconstitution of its permanent Art Gallery, I went, at their request, on a tour of inspection of the museums and schools of France. These articles were afterwards gathered into a little volume, which was subsequently translated into French and published in Paris, under the title of _L’Art en Province_. I started in the earlier days of July, and the trains between London and Paris were already thronged with tourists on their way to Switzerland, and I remember that my journey was brightened at this earlier stage by an incident, illustrating, in an amusing way, certain characteristics of the Scottish nature. Two youthful representatives of the race were seated in a compartment of a corridor carriage adjoining my own, and in the compartment beyond them were three or four young ladies travelling alone. We had not gone very far from Calais, perhaps some twenty miles or more, when the train was brought to a sudden stop, and looking out of the window I saw several officials of the railway running up and down the permanent way in evident surprise and alarm.