The Story of the House of Cassell
sternation," he writes, "I was invited with my parents, on two occasions, to dine at the Pavilion, and at the age of eighteen it is permitted for an Irishman to feel shy and nervous. On the first occasion I was summoned after dinner to approach the King, when his Majesty, with that genial kindness which was his nature, and which completely put me at my ease, asked me what profession I was destined for. I replied that I hoped to serve his Majesty in the Diplomatic Service; to which the King replied good-naturedly: 'And so you shall, my boy, and I will look after you.' These royal words, also kindly spoken, were most encouraging, and they inspired me with hope and gratitude."
To the 'nineties belong also George Augustus Sala's "Life and Adventures," written by himself. Sir Richard Temple's "Story of my Life," and Moncure D. Conway's "Autobiography." The last of these works, written by the most tender-hearted of iconoclasts, is full of generous sentiment most gracefully expressed, and abounds in appreciations of famous men on both sides of the Atlantic. It is strange that it should have been not even a moderate success.
Early in the next decade appeared the autobiography of Major Arthur Griffiths, a charming and many-sided man who had had a career in the Army, had then become Prison Governor, afterwards an Inspector of Prisons, and finally a journalist and author. From his long connexion with prisons he was an expert criminologist, but he was not lacking in humanity, and to him a criminal was something more than a mere "specimen," created in order to be dissected, classified and punished. His experiences in many parts of the world had furnished him with a store of piquant memories. One of the incidents he was fond of narrating illustrated the peculiarities of dialect which he came across in his dealings with convicts. At Wakefield a prisoner complained to him of the severity of his sentence, and on hearing from the man that the term was twelve or eighteen months for "insulting" a policeman,
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