MR THOMAS BURT'S FIRST SPEECH.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 11877, 26 April 1904, Page 7

MR THOMAS BURT'S FIRST SPEECH.

Mr Thomas Burt, whose throat troubles have again driven him for a time from Westminster, always declares that it was teetotalism that made a Minister of tbe Crown of a pit-boy. It was at a teetotal meeting in a Northumbrian Dissenting chapel that the young miner made his first "poor attempt at a speech." "It was a complete breakdown," he confesses; "I had to stop before 1 spoke many sentences. Then they sang a hymn; but I was still unable to go on, and I said to the meeting, ' Call your next man,' which they did. I was then only seventeen. I said that I would never attempt to speak again till I got whiskers." Even at this age Peter Burt's son had been working seven years underground, snatching delicious moments with Shakespeare and Milton, Scott and John Stuart Mill, with the aid of his miner's lamp.

CORRECTORS OF THE PRESS. The London Association of Correctors of tha Press, which is this year celebratug its Jubilee by a dinner, at which Viscount Goschen will preside, is still the only society in the United Kingdom devoted to the intere-its of Printers' Readers. It was founded in 1854 to facilitate friendly /ntercourse between Readers, to assist them to obtain employment, and to furtheir interests generally. It has a Benevolent Fund to help distressed members, the grants now reaching about £60 a year, and it has also several Readers' Pensions. As an indication of the sympathy felt for the Correctors of the Press by writers of all schools of thought, it may b? mentioned that among those who contributed to establish its first pension were Lord Tennyson and Robert Browning, Wilkie Collins and Walter Besant, Archbishop Benson, Cardinal Manning, and Mr C. H. Spurgeon. Her late* Majesty Queen Victoria eubscribed to both the second and third pensions. Charles Dickens took much interest in improving th? position of Readers, and paid a high tribute to 'their work. "I feel that Printer-*' Readers have a peculiar claim on mc," he said, "as a writer, which I am bound to recognise. I am constantly under obligation to them for their good sense, intelligence, knowledge, and watchfulness; they have » right to any little service I can render them in return."