then a hand was feebly raised from the river towards the glistening pewter. 'Ah,' said the knowing friend, 'I knew Tom couldn't resist that;' and straightway he plunged in and brought him out. Peace be to the ashes of the entire race. One cannot think of their failings without a kindly feeling; but they were a sad, disreputable set, and we may be thankful that their own favourite vices have killed them off so fast.

I might extend this paper to an illimitable length with reminiscences of different reporters in town and country, and with repetitions of the many good stories current regarding them. Not to transgress, however, upon the patience of the most forbearing of editors, let me briefly describe the ordinary career of a reporter. He begins life most probably as the 'devil' in some small weekly paper office; is taught short-hand by the Tom Potts of the establishment; and when the latter has succumbed to innumerable 'goes' of whisky, succeeds to his post. From the weekly paper he works his way to one of the less important dailies; and from it in turn he passes to Edinburgh, Leeds, Manchester, or Liverpool, where the reporters are in all respects the equals of their metropolitan brethren. Possibly, he settles down now for life,

rising in due time to a sub-editorship, or perhaps to the editorship of a small paper of his own. Generally, however, the prospect of easier work and better pay draws him to London, where he gains a place in the Gallery,' from which it has been well said, he can rise to anything.

IN THE GALLERY.

To the press-man anywhere in the British Islands, there is but one Gallery-that which runs across one end of the House of Commons, at the back of the Speaker's chair. The visitor who has spent an evening in the Strangers' Gallery, at the other end of the House, has no doubt noticed this opposite Gallery and its occupants with some degree of curiosity. He has seen seated in it a score or two of men busily plying their pencils, and taking down, with unerring accuracy and marvellous rapidity, the utterances of the speakers on the floor of the House below. Whilst everywhere else throughout the House nothing having the appearance of business has presented itself to his view, in this portion of the chamber he cannot have failed to see with what steady regularity work-and that of a particularly arduous kind—is constantly being carried on. An evening in the Reporters' Gallery can hardly be less interesting than one spent in

the Strangers' Gallery; and as admission to the former is confined to the privileged few, we may spend a few hours profitably in taking our readers over the spot, and in explaining to them the mysterious character of the work which is constantly being carried on there.

In the corner of New Palace Yard, a little behind the carriage entrance to the Houses of Parliament, there is a modest doorway. The man who has passed through that doorway once might easily look again for it, and look in vain. The doorway leads into a low dark passage, on one side of which a second door gives access to a long flight of stairs. Stumbling up these stone stairs till your legs ache, and you pant for breath, you reach a dimly lighted landing place. Through a swinging glass door, you see a low-roofed room-more like the cabin of a ship than an apartment in the palace of Westminster-in which are gathered half a dozen reporters, waiting for their 'turn.' This room is the 'den' of the keeper of the Gallery. A fire burns briskly in it, although the state of the temperature is not such as to require any artificial means of warmth. On the fire simmers a kettle, and you thereby see that this room is not used for literary pursuits, but is devoted to purposes not less important, though

perhaps less honourable-namely, those of eating and drinking. Two reporters, seated at one of the tables, are discussing the speech, which is even now being brought to a close in the House, between the intervals devoted by them to the consumption of tea and toast. Others, it may be, indulge in stronger potations; but everywhere you see that in this outer chamber business is forgotten, and the minds of its occupants are unbent. It is very

different in the next apartment to which you come, and which is even more cabin-like than the other. Oak-panelled walls and roof, swinging lamps, thick carpets, and fixed desks, make the resemblance to the ordinary style of naval architecture almost complete. You enter first a room of irregular shape, and you see on either side two smaller square rooms. Around the sides of all these rooms are fixed rows of desks, and here you perceive the reporters who have just left the House' engaged in converting their crooked cipher into 'copy' for the printers. Busy 'leaders'-the leaders or chiefs of the different staffs of newspaper reporters-pass from one man to another, asking questions, giving information, and learning the amount of copy already supplied, or still required. Here and there, on a little table in one or other of the rooms, stands the dial box of a telegraph-machine, and these are