special instructions not to admit me into the "precincts of that holy
place" unless I was perfectly sober. There was an overflow crowd in the
street, and I put it to them whether I was drunk or sober. There was a
majority that said I was sober, and Mr Grayson allowed me to pass in.
When Mr Leach saw me entering the hall, he called out of the police; but
finally allowed me to take a seat at the foot of the stage. At the outset
he declined to have me on the platform, until he "broke down," and said,
"Tha'd better come up here, Bill, for ah'm ommost worn aat. Ah'll gie
thee ten minutes ta say summat." I accordingly mounted the platform and
recited a few pieces I had written--"Come, nivver dee i' thi shell, owd
lad" (one of Mr Leach's favourites), "Biddy Blake," &c. After the
lecture, I went with Mr Leach in a cab to his home. When we got there he
said "They'll be tawkin' abaat this at t' Devonshire. Tak' this shillin',
and go see what they've ta say abaat my lecter." I went to the Devonshire
Hotel, and found several gentlemen talking and laughing over the
"sermons." However, Mr Leach had done his best, "an' t' Prime Minister
couldn't dew more," as he expressed it. The delivery of the funeral
sermons marked the close of his public life. It was not long after that
he showed signs of illness, and I went to live with, and wait upon him. I
had often to recite my poems for him, and one he frequently asked for was
"The pauper's box;" he assured me that he would leave me enough to keep
me from being buried in a pauper's coffin:--

Thou odious box, as I look on thee,
I wonder wilt thou be unlocked for me?
No, no! forbear!--yet then, yet then,
'Neath thy grim lid do lie the men--
Men whom fortune's blasted arrows hit,
And send them to the pauper's pit.

. . . . .

But let me pause, ere I say more
About thee, unoffending door;
When I bethink me, now I pause,
It is not thee who makes the laws,
But villains, who, if all were just,
In thy grim cell would lay their dust.

But yet, 'twere grand beneath yon wall
To lie with friends,--relations all,
If sculptured tombstones were not there,
But simple grass with daisies fair--
And were it not, grim box, for thee,
'Twere Paradise, O Cemetery!

CHAPTER XXI

MR LEACH AT WAKEFIELD

Continuing my recollections of the late Mr James Leach. I remember
accompanying him as "valet de sham"--as the old gentleman was pl