I have endeavoured to make this little sketch of my old home as brief as possible, and will conclude this chapter with an incident that ultimately happened to be of considerable importance to me:
At a certain juvenile party, while still in jackets and turned-down collars, I met and became enamoured of a little maiden in a short frock and sash.
She flattered me by approving of my comic songs; and I was immensely struck with her power of conversation, which was unusual for one so young. I ascertained that her name was Emmeline Rosa Noyce, and that she was the only daughter of Doctor Noyce, whose practice was in the neighbourhood. We danced every dance together; but the Fates decreed that we should not meet again for another three or four years. We did meet—in a crowd, and again danced nearly every dance together; for, strange to say, she understood my step.
All this was simply a beginning to a very happy end: and I can say with truth that the wisest step I ever took in the whole course of my life was when, on the 14th May, 1873, I made my juvenile sweetheart my wife—with her consent, of course,—and, thank God, I have never had reason to regret it for a single second.
CHAPTER III.
At Bow Street Police Court.
"Take down our sentence as we speak it."—Iolanthe.
For a period of twenty years I had the distinguished honour of being decidedly "well known to the police." When I between seventeen and eighteen years of age, and still at the North London Collegiate School, I received instructions from my father, who was just starting for Liverpool, that as Mr. Courtenay was ill I must go and "do" Bow Street. Mr. John Kelly Courtenay used to do all the reporting at Bow Street Police Court during my father's absence on his lecturing tours. I had learned shorthand (the Lewisian system, I believe it was called) some two or three years previously.
Off I marched to Bow Street with the greatest sang-froid to report a case, at which in after years I should certainly have shied. It was a most important bank fraud, and meant enormous complications in figures. Mr. Burnaby, the chief clerk, was kind enough to let me correct my figures from the depositions which had been taken by him; Sir Thomas Henry repeated to me the gist of his remarks on remanding the case, and the result was I turned out a report on manifold for all the evening and morning papers, and the usual special report for The Times—in this instance over a column long—with which my father was delighted.
I received a most encouraging letter from him after a few days' interval. The interval was merely to give time for the arrival of any complaint from the papers. Editors are not in the habit of sending letters of congratulation, only of complaint. No complaint arrived, however, and my only disappointment was the complete absence of important and interesting cases.