DICKENS AS A REPORTER.

Westport Times, Volume IV, Issue 719, 4 October 1870, Page 3

DICKENS AS A REPORTER.

When Chairman at the Newspaper

'ress Pund Dinner in 1565, Mr Dick

ins gave the following vivid sketch of (is early experiences in journalism : [ I went into the gallery of the House if Commons as a Parliamentary reporter when I was a boy not eighteen, tnd I left it—(l can hardly believe !i& inexorable truth) —nigh thirty ears ago. I have pursued the calling f a reporter under circumstances of

!i many of my brethren at home lgland here, many of my modern ssors, can form no adequate conan. I have often transcribed for ■rinter from my shorthand notes, rtant public speeches in which strictest accuracy was required, i mistake in which would have to a young man, severely comising; writing on the palm of my by the light of a dark lantern, in st chaise and four, galloping gh a wild country, and through ead of night, at the then surprisite of fifteen miles an hour. The last time I was in Exter I strolled ;he castle yard there to identify, he amusement of a friend, the on which I once " took," as we to call it, an election speech of oble friend Lord Russell, in the ; of a lively fight maintained by 16 vagabonds in that division of mntry, and under such a pelting that I remember two good nacolleagues who chanced to be at e, held a pocket handkerchief my note-book, after the manner )f a state canopy in an ecclesiastical irocession. I have worn my knees by mting on them in the old gallery of he old House of Commons ; and I

bave worn my feet by standing to write in a preposterous pen in the old House of Lords, where we used to be like so many sheep kept raiting, say, until the woolsack might want stufling. "Returning 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 this country, I have been, in my time, belated on miry by-roads towards the small hours, forty or fifty miles from London in a wheelless carriage, with exhausted horses and I drunken postboys, and have got back in time for publication, to be received with never-forgotten compliments by the late Mr Black, coming in the broadest of Scotch from the broadest of hearts I ever knew. Ladies and gentlemen, I mention these things as an assurance to you that I never have forgotten the fascination of that old pursuit. The pleasure that I used to reel in the rapidity and dexterity of its exercise has never faded out of my breast. Whatever little cunning of | band or head I took to it, or acquired | in it, I have so retained as that I fully ■ believe I could resume it to-morrow, very little the worse for long disuse. To this present year of my life, when I sit in this hall, or where not, hearing a dull speech—the phenomenon does occur—l sometimes beguile the tedium of the moment by mentally following the speaker in the old, old way; and sometimes, if you can believe me, I even find my hand going on the tablecloth, taking an imaginary note of it all.