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to be issued before his
scholars and to go unanswered. Without another word, he took the man
by the coat-collar with one hand, by the most convenient part of his
breeches with the other hand, carried him to the door, gave him a
half-a-dozen admonitory shakings, and chucked him down outside.
Then he returned and made this cool entry in the school log-book:
'Father of the boy ---- came into the school to-day, and was very
disorderly. I carried him out and chastised him.'"
It was while he was engaged on Vanity Fair that I first met
Runciman--I should think somewhere about the year 1880. He then
edited (or sub-edited) for a short time that clever but abortive little
journal, London, started by Mr. W.E. Henley, and contributed to by
Andrew Lang, Robert Louis Stevenson, Edmund Gosse, and half a
dozen more of us. Here we met not infrequently. I was immensely
impressed by Runciman's vigorous personality, and by his profound
sympathy with the troubles and trials and poverty of the real people. He
called himself a Conservative, it is true, while I called myself a Radical;
but, except in name, I could not see much difference between our
democratic tendencies. Runciman appeared to me a most earnest and
able thinker, full of North-country grit, and overflowing with energy.
His later literary work is well known to the world. He contributed to the
_St. James's Gazette_ an admirable series of seafaring sketches,
afterwards reprinted as "The Romance of the North Coast." He also
wrote "special" articles for the Standard and the Pall Mall, as well as
essays on social and educational topics for the Contemporary and the
Fortnightly. The humour and pathos of pupil-teaching were exquisitely
brought out in his "School Board Idylls" and "Schools and Scholars";
his knowledge of the sea and his experience of fishermen supplied him
with materials for "Skippers and Shellbacks" and for "Past and
Present." He was always a lover of his kind, so his work has almost
invariably a strong sympathetic note; and perhaps his best-known book,
"A Dream of the North Sea," was written in support of the Mission to

Fishermen. He produced but one novel, "Grace Balmaign's Sweetheart";
but his latest work, "Joints in our Social Armour," returned once more
to that happier vein of picturesque description which sat most easily
and naturally upon him.
The essays which compose the present volume were contributed to the
columns of the Family Herald. And this is their history:--For many
years I had answered the correspondence and written the social essays
in that excellent little journal--a piece of work on which I am not
ashamed to say that I always look back with affectionate pleasure.
Several years since, however, I found myself compelled by health to
winter abroad, and therefore unable to continue my weekly
contributions. Who could fill up the gap? Who answer my dear old
friends and questioners? The proprietor asked me to recommend a
substitute. I bethought me instinctively at once of Runciman. The work
was, indeed, not an easy one for which to find a competent workman. It
needed a writer sufficiently well educated to answer a wide range of
questions on the most varied topics, yet sufficiently acquainted with the
habits, ideas, and social codes of the lower middle class and the
labouring people to throw himself readily into their point of view on
endless matters of life and conduct. Above all, it needed a man who
could sympathise genuinely with the simplest of his fellows. The love
troubles of housemaids, the perplexities as to etiquette, or as to
practical life among shop-girls and footmen, must strike him, not as
ludicrous, but as subjects for friendly advice and assistance. The
fine-gentleman journalist would clearly have been useless for such a
post as that. Runciman was just cut out for it. I suggested the work to
him, and he took to it kindly. The editor was delighted with the way he
buckled up to his new task, and thanked me warmly afterwards for
recommending so admirable and so gentle a workman. Those who do
not know the nature of the task may smile; but the man who answers
the Family Herald correspondence, stands in the position of confidant
and father-confessor to tens of thousands of troubled and anxious souls
among his fellow-countrymen, and still more his fellow-countrywomen.
It is, indeed, a sacerdoce. The essays are usually contributed by the
same person who answers the correspondence; and the collection of
Runciman's papers reprinted in this little volume will show that they

have often no mean literary value.
For many years, however, Runciman had systematically overworked,
and in other ways abused, his magnificent constitution. The seeds of
consumption were gradually developed. But the crash came suddenly.
Early in the summer of 1891, he broke down