Having introduced this society, I cannot refrain from telling the story of another transaction in which it was concerned. The ramifications of the society extended in many directions, and a more useful organisation could scarcely be imagined. It was like an elephant’s trunk, which can uproot a tree—if the elephant is in a good humour—but which does not disdain to pick up a pin—like the boy who afterwards became Lord Mayor of London. The society did not shrink from discussing the question “Is a Monarchy or a Republic the right form of Government?” on the same night that it dealt with a new stopper for soda-water bottles. The Carboniferous Future of England was treated of upon the same evening as the Immortality of the Soul; perhaps there is a closer connection than at first meets the eye between the two subjects. It took ancient buildings under its protection, as well as the most recently fabricated pre-historic axe-head; and it was the discharge of its functions in regard to ancient buildings that caused the committee to pass a resolution one day, calling on their secretary to communicate with the owner of a neighbouring property, in the midst of which a really fine ruin of an ancient castle, with many interesting associations, was situated, begging him to order a wall to be built around the ruins, so as to prevent them from continuing to be the resort of cows with a fine taste in archaeology, when the summer days were warm and they wanted their backs scratched.
The property was in Ireland, consequently the landlord lived in England, and had never so much as seen the ruins. It was news to him that anything of interest was to be found on his Irish estates; but as his son was contemplating the possibility of entering Parliament as the representative of an Irish borough, he at once crossed the Channel, had an interview with the society’s secretary, and, with the president, visited the old castle, and was delighted with it. He sent for his bailiff, and told him that he wanted a wall four feet high to be built round the field in the centre of which the ruins lay—he even went so far as to “peg out,” so to speak, the course that he wished the wall to take.
The Irish bailiff stared at his master, but expressed the delight it would give him to carry out his wishes.
The owner crossed to England, promising to return in three months to see how the work had been done.
He kept his word. He returned in three months, and found, sure enough, that an excellent wall had been built on the exact lines he had laid down, but every stone of the ruins of the ancient castle had disappeared.
The bailiff stood by with a beaming face as he explained how the ruins had gone.
He had caused the wall to be built out of the stones of the ancient castle, to save expense.
If reporters were only afforded a little leisure, any one of them who has lived in a large town could compile an interesting volume of his experiences. I have often regretted that I could never master the art of shorthand. I worked at it for months when a boy, and made sufficient progress to be able to write it pretty fairly; but writing is not everything. The capacity for transcribing one’s notes is something to be taken into account; and it was at this point that I broke down, and was forced to become a novelist—a sort of novelist. The first time that I went up country in Africa, my stock of paper being limited, I carried only two pocket-books, and economised my space by taking my notes in shorthand. I had no occasion to refer to these notes until I was writing my novel “Daireen,” and then I found myself face to face with a hundred pages of hieroglyphs which were utterly unintelligible to me. In despair I brought them to a reporter, and he read them off for me much more rapidly than he or anyone else could read my ordinary handwriting to-day. In fact, he read just a little too fast,—I was forced to beg him to stop. There are some occurrences of which one takes a note in shorthand in one’s youth in a strange country, but which one does not wish particularly to offer to the perusal of strangers years afterwards.