equently in the _Guardian_ gossip columns
under the attractive title of "The Sanctum." In the middle of the floor
stood a large writing-table, from which the leather covering had peeled
off, exposing the wood beneath like a plane tree with its bark
half-shed. On the table lay, in picturesque confusion, bundles of
galley-slips, clippings from newspapers, sheets of "copy" paper, all
partially secured in their positions by small slabs of lead as
paper-weights.

The waste-paper basket to the left of the table had overflowed, and the
floor around was strewn with cut newspapers and crumpled sheets of
manuscript. On the walls hung two large maps, one showing the railways
of England and the other the Midland counties. Above the fireplace a
printer's calendar was nailed. Three soiled and battered haircloth
chairs completed the furniture of the room when we have added a damaged
arm-chair, cushioned with a pile of old papers. This was the editor's
chair. Its intrinsic value was probably half-a-crown, but to the regular
readers of the _Guardian_ it must have seemed as priceless as the gold
stool of Ashanti, for they were accustomed to read two columns every
week headed "From the Editor's Chair."

The short, thick-set person, with the slightly bald head and distinctly
red nose above a heavy black moustache, which trailed its way down each
side of a clean-shaven chin and drooped over into space, was the editor
himself. With a briar pipe, burnt at one side, stuck in his mouth, and
puffing vigorously, he sat there in his shirt sleeves, and his pen flew
swiftly over the sheets of paper that lay before him.

When Mr. Charles and his son entered, the editor laid down his pipe and
pen, and rising from his chair, said in the most affable way:

"Ah, I am pleased to meet you, Mr. Charles; and this is your son Henry,
of whose ability I have already heard."

Shaking hands with each, he pointed them to seats and resumed his own.

"So Henry is ambitious of embarking on a journalistic career," he
remarked, as he lifted his pipe again; adding, "I hope you don't mind my
smoking. I find a weed a great incentive to thought."

Mr. Springthorpe always spoke like a leading article, and it was noticed
by those who knew him best that on the occasions when his nose was
particularly ruddy and his utterance somewhat thick, his flow of
language and the stateliness of his words were even more marked than
when one could not detect the odour of the tap-roo