"reckoned on a proper stoicism in the victims of public necessity," and I
suppose my brother was regarded as thin-skinned, but a man may be
forgiven a measure of sensitiveness when his honour is impeached.

He always used to speak with gratitude of the action of Lord Russell of
Killowen at that period. He heard the gossip of the clubs, and was not
content, like the majority of men, either to believe it or to dismiss the
matter with a shrug of the shoulders. He sought my brother out at his own
house, heard the whole story from his own lips--through an informal but
stringent process of cross-examination--drew his own conclusions, and did
more than anyone else to turn the tide of misrepresentation. Lord Russell
never rested until Wemyss Reid was elected an honorary member of the
Eighty Club, a distinction shared by only two or three persons, and one
which did not a little to bring about, in the Liberal party at least, a
quick reversal of public opinion. The chivalrous action of Lord Russell
was all the more creditable as the two men at the time were only slightly
acquainted. Other honours came to my brother within the next two years.
The University of St. Andrews in 1893 conferred upon him the degree of
LL.D., and in the following year he was knighted "for services to Letters
and Politics."

It is a pleasure to hark back to the literary interests which grew around
the later years of my brother in London. He went thither in 1887 to take
control of the business of Messrs. Cassell & Company--a position of wide
influence and hard work which he retained to the last day of his life. He
used to tell me that he detested the City and the irksomeness of keeping
office hours, but he stuck manfully to his post, and his presence at the
desk there lent a lustre even to the traditions of a great publishing
house. I betray no confidences when I say that at first he found his new
duties somewhat uncongenial. He had won his spurs as a journalist, he was