myself go on Barnes, and so was entrusted with the Barnes Obituary
article for _The Spectator_.

The result was that the next week my chiefs showed me a letter one of
them had received from Canon Ainger, asking for the name of the
"evidently new hand" who had written on Barnes, and making some very
complimentary remarks on his work. It was eminently characteristic of
them that instead of being a little annoyed at being told that an
article had appeared in _The Spectator_ with an unexpected literary
charm, they were as genuinely delighted as I was.

In any case, the incident served, as I have said, to drive the nail up
to the head and to make Mr. Hutton and Mr. Townsend feel that they had
not been rash in their choice, and had got a man who could do literature
as well as politics.

Not being without a sense of superstition, at any rate where cats are
concerned, and a devout lover of "the furred serpent," I may record the
last, the complete rite of my initiation at _The Spectator_ office.
While I was one day during my novitiate talking over articles and
waiting for instructions--or, rather, finding articles for my chiefs to
write about, for that very soon became the routine--a large,
consequential, not to say stout black Tom-cat slowly entered the room,
walked round me, sniffed at my legs in a suspicious manner, and then, to
my intense amazement and amusement, hurled himself from the floor with
some difficulty and alighted upon my shoulder. Mr. Townsend, who loved
anything dramatic, though he did not love animals as Mr. Hutton did,
pointed to the cat and muttered dramatically, "Hutton, just look at
that!"