CHARLES DICKENS ON NEWSPAPERS.

Southland Times, Volume III, Issue 197, 3 January 1866, Page 3

CHARLES DICKENS ON NEWSPAPERS.

At the second anniversary dinner of the Newspaper Press Eund held on Saturday night last, at the Ereemason's Tavern, Mr. Charles Dickens presided, and in the course of his speech made the following humorous remarks : — I went into the gallery of the House of Commons as a Parliamentary reporter when I was a boy not 18, and I left it — I can hardly believe tbe inexorable truth — nigh 30 years ago ; and I have pursued tbe the calling of reporter under circumstances of which many of my brethren's successors, can form no adequate conception. I have often transcribed for the printer from my short-hand notes public speeches in which the strictest accuracy was required, and a mistake in which would have been to a young man severely compromising, written on the palm of my hand by the light of a dark lantern in a post chaise and four, galloping through a wild country, all through tbe dead of the night, and at the then surprising rate of fifteen miles an hour. The very last time, I was in Exeter I strolled into the castle yard, there to identify, for the amusement of a friend, the spot on which I once " took " as we used to call it, an election speech of my friend Lord Eussell, in the midst of a lively fight, maintained by all the vagabonds in that division of the country, and under such pelting rain that I remember two good-natured colleagues who chanced to be at leisure, held a pocket handkerchief over my note-book, after the manner of a state canopy in an ecclesiastical procession. (Laughter.) I have worn my knees by writing on them on the old back row of the old gallery of the House of Commons ; and I have worn my feet by standing to write in a preposterous pen ' in the old House of Lords, where we used to be huddled like so many sheep — (Laughter) — kept in waiting till the woolsack might want stuffing. Eeturning home from excited political meetings in the country to the waiting press in London. I do verily believe I have been upset in almost every description of vehicle known in tbis country. I have been in my time belated on miry byeroads towards tbe small hours 40 or 50 miles from London in a ricketty carriage, * witb exhausted horses and drunk postboys, and have got back in time before * publication, to be received with neverforgotten compliments by Mr. Black in the broadest of Scotch, coming from the [ broadest of hearts I ever knew. (Hear, hear.) Ladies and gentlemen, I mentioned these trivial things as an assurance ' to you that I never have forgotten V" fascination of that old pursuit ' pleasure that I used to feel i* pidity and dexterity of its/ never faded out of my br/*-' little cunning of hand it, or acquired in it. ' as that I fully bel'*' to-morrow. (Cl year of life,/'"* not, hearhv menon d" tbe ted follow ■ . ;. way fin (7 y /•■ - "■_■'. .'■•'.,.'