represented Tom as "Ye Press of Newcastle"--a mere boy in a short jacket
perched on a stool, scribbling for dear life at the foot of a platform on
which some local orator was denouncing the tyranny of the existing
Government. He must then have been about seventeen, certainly not more,
and he was even at that time somewhat of a youthful prodigy. Then he
developed a passion for the collection of autographs, and used to write
the most alluring letters to celebrities, and astound my modest father by
the replies--they were invariably written as to a man of mature life and
public importance--which he had elicited from eminent people in politics
and the world of letters. He, a mere youth, invited a well-known Arctic
explorer to Newcastle to lecture on his perils in the frozen North, and
my father bought him his first hat to go to the railway station to meet
the gallant sailor, who brought his pathetic relics of Franklin to our
house, where he stayed as guest. The great man's chagrin when he found
that a lad scarcely out of short jackets had invited him to Newcastle
vanished in the genial firelight, and in the subsequent reception of the
good townsfolk. Then my brother conceived the ambitious scheme of the
West End Literary Institute, and by dint of energetic and persistent
begging carried the project out, and with a high hand.

Suddenly, when he was still a young reporter, a great calamity befell the
locality. The Hartley Colliery catastrophe plunged all Tyneside in gloom.
He was the youngest reporter on the local Press, but his account of the
long-drawn agony of that terrible time, when two hundred brave fellows
lost their lives, was the most graphic. It brought him local renown. It
was published as a shilling pamphlet, after it had done duty in the
_Newcastle Journal_, and to his credit he gave, though as poor as a
church mouse, the whole of the proceeds--a sum of L40, I think--to the
Relief Fund. It was a characteristic act which was not belied by the
subsequent generosity of his life. All too soon--for he brought as a