itten of him:--

"I first met him at a meeting of the Russell Club at Oxford. He was
a great light there, being hon. sec. It was in 1890, and Steevens
had been head-boy of the City of London School, and then Senior
Scholar at Balliol. Even at the Russell Club, then, he was regarded
as a great man. The membership was, I think, limited to twenty--all
Radical stalwarts. I well remember his witty comments on a paper
advocating Women's Rights. He was at his best when opening the
debate after some such paper. Little did that band of ardent souls
imagine their leader would, in a few short years, be winning fame
for a Tory halfpenny paper.

"He sat next me at dinner, just before he graduated, and he was in
one of those pensive moods which sometimes came over him. I believe
he hardly spoke. In '92 he entered himself as a candidate for a
Fellowship at Pembroke. I recollect his dropping into the
examination-room half an hour late, while all the rest had been
eagerly waiting outside the doors to start their papers at once.
But what odds? He was miles ahead of them all--an easy first. It
was rumoured in Pembroke that the new Fellow had been seen smoking
(a pipe, too) in the quad--that the Dean had said it was really
shocking, such a bad example to the undergraduates, and against all
college rules. How could we expect undergraduates to be moral if Mr
Steevens did such things? How, indeed? Then came Mr Oscar Browning
from Cambridge, and carried off" Steevens to the 'second university
in the kingdom,' so that we saw but little of him. Some worshipped,
others denounced him. The Cambridge papers took sides. One spoke of
'The Shadow' or 'The Fetish,' _au contraire_: another would praise
the great Oxford genius. Whereas at Balliol Steevens was boldly
criticised, at Cambridge he was hated or adored.

"A few initiated friends knew that Steevens was writing for the
'Pall Mall' and the 'Cambridge Observer,' and it soon became
evident that journalism was to be his life-work. Last February I
met him in the Strand, and he was much changed: no more crush hat,
and long hair, and Bohemian manners. He was back from the East, and
a great man now--married and settled as well--very spruce, and
inclined to be enthusiastic about the Empire. But still I remarked
his old indiffe