MY most vivid recollection of the Publisher is when I was trying to climb on his shoulders, at the risk of plunging into the square below, while he was leaning out of an upper window of the Johnson House to see a Zeppelin passing that was dropping bombs. The police were shouting at us, and threatening to raid the house, if we did not go in and turn out the lights. The great airship was slowly sailing overhead, brilliantly illuminated by the flare of the searchlights and the explosion of shells, and as we were a company of twenty-eight in the upper room just under the roof, a chance bomb falling upon the house would, in all probability, have shattered the majority of us.
The Publisher had kindly invited me to be his guest at a supper of the Johnson Club. At supper Mr. Clement Shorter sat on my right, Mr. Augustine Birrell just beyond him, and a group of members of Parliament were sitting around the secretary at the head of the table and opposite to us. After supper a paper was read on the cynicism of Dr. Johnson. Before the discussion began the secretary was asked to look in the dictionary to find the precise definition of a cynic. While he was doing so, a loud explosion was heard outside and near by. I did not recognize the sound; it was very loud, but dull, and did not reverberate: so I turned to Clement Shorter to say that a Zeppelin raid was in progress, when another and nearer
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