abroad.”  In the words of Mr. Vaughan of the Bow Street Police Court (September 7, ’85) the Pall Mall’s “Sensational articles had certainly given unlimited pain and sorrow to many good people at home and had greatly lowered the English nation in the estimation of foreigners.”  In a sequel to the Eliza Armstrong case Mr. Justice Manisty, when summing up, severely condemned the “shocking exhibition that took place in the London streets by the publication of statements containing horrible details, and he trusted that those who were responsible for the administration of the law would take care that such outrage should not be permitted again.”  So pure and pious Mr. Stead found time for reflection during the secluded three-months life of a “first-class misdemeanant” in “happy Holywell,” and did not bring out his intended articles denouncing London as the head- quarters of a certain sin named from Sodom.

About mid-September, when Mr. Stead still lay in durance vile, a sub-editor Mr. Morley (Jun.) applied to me for an interview which I did not refuse.  It was by no means satisfactory except to provide his paper with “copy.”  I found him labouring hard to place me “in the same box” with his martyred principal and to represent my volume ("a book of archaic delights”) as a greater outrage on public decency than the two-penny pamphlet.  This, as said the London Figaro (September 19, ’85), is a “monstrous and absurd comparison.”  It became evident to me, during the first visit, that I was to play the part of Mr. Pickwick between two rival races of editors, the pornologists and the anti-pornologists, and, having no stomach for such sport, I declined the role.  In reply to a question about critics my remark to the interviewer was, “I have taken much interest in what the classics call Skiomachia and I shall allow Anonymus and Anonyma to howl unanswered.  I shall also treat with scornful silence the miserables who, when shown a magnificent prospect, a landscape adorned with the highest charms of Nature and Art, can only see in a field corner here and there a little heap of muck.  ’You must have been looking for it, Madam!’ said, or is said to have said, sturdy old Doctor Samuel Johnson.”

Moreover Mr. Morley’s style of reporting “interviews” was somewhat too advanced and American—­that is, too personal, too sensation-mongering and too nauseously familiar—­to suit my taste, and I would have none other of them.  Hereupon being unable to make more copy out of the case the Pall Mall Gazette let loose at me a German Jew pennyliner, who signs himself Sigma.  This pauvre diable delivered himself of two articles, “Pantagruelism or Pornography?” (September 14, ’85) and “The Ethics of the Dirt” (September 19, ’85), wherein with matchless front of brass he talks of the “unsullied British breakfast-table,” so pleasantly provided with pepper by his immaculate editor.  And since that time the Pall Mall Gazette has never ceased to practice at my expense its old trade, falsehood and