STORIES OF LITERARY PEOPLE

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1716, 18 January 1905, Page 11

STORIES OF LITERARY PEOPLE

The last month or two has brought forth quite a deluge of Lives and Reminiscences of Famous Men. “Fifty Years in Fleet Street,” being the life and recollections of Sir John R. Robinson, of the “Daily News,” is most entertaining. In these days, when the newspaper world is making history, it is well to know something of the immediate past. Sir John tells many good stories. Here are a few picked out at random:—

The story of the enlistment of Archibald Forbes for the “Daily News,” under Robinson’s auspices, has often been related. A pathetic incident is recorded for the first time of a visit paid to Forbes upon his delirious deathbed : Sitting up in bod as Robinson entered the room, Forbes, with pale, emaciated face, and eyes staring wide open called out: “Those guns, man, don’t you see those guns ? I tell you the brave fellows will be mowed down like grass.” Presently he lay down and was calmer, but it was tlie calmness that betokened the end which was near. A day or two more and liis adventurous career was over.

A fellow named Walker, a weak, irresolute creature . . . had tried a

score of things, and had failed in all. At last he took to “the road,” and tried to stop the mail. The driver, however.

laughed at him, and drove on. The next day Bret Harte, who had been puzzled by the easy way the driver had treated the circumstances, said: "Underville, why on earth didn’t you shoot Walker yesterday ? You could have done it easily.” “Well,” said the driver, in perfect seriousness and without any thought of a joke, “You see, the poor devil has failed in everything, and if I’d ’a shot him, it would ’a kinder discouraged him.” Late in life Gladstone had some affection of one eye, and he was recommended not to try his sight by writing at too- great length. Such was his passion for work, however, that he accustomed himself to write with his eyes shut to obviate the danger. An intimfvte friend once remonstrated with him on seeing him writing. “It is very wrong of you,” he said, “to sit write, write, writing at that table when you have the use of only one of your eyes.” “No,” said the wonderful old man, “1 don’t need that eye at all when lam at this kind of work. I have been writing mechanically without using either eye for the last hour.” It was in this way that ho wrote the whole of his essay, “Heresy and Schism,” that appeared in the “Nineteenth Century” for August, 1894.