offered to draw any petitions to the Home Secretary for me and to correct errors in spelling.

I read a certain number of novels, but I also got through the whole of Shakespeare twice. I knew my Bible fairly well, but I seized the opportunity for improving my knowledge and read the whole of it through from the beginning to end, including Leviticus and Deuteronomy, which are sociologically quite interesting. I wrote a good many letters, far more than my permitted number, but after a time I settled down to writing some religious essays which I published afterwards under the title of "Lay Sermons." I did not see why John Bunyan should be the only man who wrote books in prison.

The first-class misdemeanants were exercised by themselves, and were not required to tramp round the prison yard, but were allowed to walk or sit about or talk or occupy themselves in any way they liked. My colleagues were six in number: a mixed crowd: two Dunlops and a Welsbach, by which I mean people who had been committed for contempt by the Court of Chancery for the breach of an injunction not to infringe patents. They were uninteresting; then there was another Chancery prisoner who had been committed because he would not sign a deed, an old and obstinate man; curiously enough my friend Bassett Hopkins was acting for him, and got him out after a short time. Then there was an unspeakable ruffian of a quack doctor who was held on a coroner's warrant as a witness; the coroner subsequently committed him for manslaughter, but of course he got off. The last prisoner was a poor half-witted, unkempt youth almost in rags who had been convicted a second time for stealing coal, whom the magistrates had sent to prison in the first division because they did not want to punish him and did not know what else to do.

He was the hero of an amusing incident; one day, when we were at exercise the Deputy Governor came along and I called his attention to the fact that this wretched boy was only wearing a pair of split boots without any socks. Le Mesurier was shocked, and spoke kindly to him and told him that the prison had a store from which a pair of socks could be supplied to him. The boy's superb answer was: "I don't wear socks." The Tenth don't dance!

Mollie used to come regularly three times a week and brought me books and letters and all the news, and towards the end I was allowed to see her without the intervening screen. She was most

devoted and a great comfort, and on my thirty-sixth birthday she gave me a lovely dressing-case of green leather which I still use. Many other friends came to see me including my Aunt Maude who told me with the sternness of the Stanleys that she thought I deserved what I had got. During the last half of my term I really had a fairly happy time what with my visitors, my letters, my writing and the faithful Scott and Le Mesurier coming to take tea with me, and I more or less ran the prison as St. Paul did his after they had got used to him. At last the time came for my release and on the 17th of October, 1901, my possessions were restored to me, I was shaved by the prison barber, passed through the handsome gate which I had not seen since I came in and drove off to Raymond Buildings a free man. A day or two later I was entertained at a complimentary dinner by the members of the Pharos Club, and the next day I hastened off to see my beloved Telegraph House again although I had practically lost all the summer there. My own club had behaved very handsomely; the Committee had taken the sensible view that the prosecution and the conviction were both farcical, and had resolved unanimously that although a convicted felon there was no reason why I should lose my membership. I cannot say as much for everybody; I had money on an Irish mortgage lent to me by Commander Digby, and he thought fit to choose the opportunity when I was down and out and could not attend to business to call in his money.

I resumed my activities, including my work on the L.C.C., with not much more interruption than if I had been away on a three months' journey, but the conviction for felony still rankled, and I was very glad when ten years later I received a free pardon under the Great Seal. I went to talk to Mr. Asquith about it in 1911, and found him very kind and sympathetic. When he asked me point blank: "Why do you say you should have a pardon?" I said: "Well, the official reason is that I have been a good citizen, for ten years since the offence, and that my conduct is free from any reproach; but if you ask me for the real reason I should say because the conviction was a piece of hypocritical tosh." Whether he took that view or not, I don't know; but he got me the pardon, for which he has my undying gratitude.

While I was in prison Mabel Edith had obtained her Decree Absolute-and the £5,000-but I understand that by that time the whole of it had been pledged to moneylenders of one sort and another so that she only touched about £100. I was rid of her at

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last, and from beginning to end she had cost me £30,000. It would have been much cheaper to pay her the £1,000 a year for which she asked in the beginning, if she had not made this course impossible.

It is an interesting thing that all the counsel who were opposed to me in my matrimonial cases have always become my firm friends afterwards with the single exception of Sir Edward Clarke whose conduct in the first trial was such that I should not have welcomed his friendship. Even George Lewis I used to see frequently at the Incorporated Law Society on quite friendly terms.

Two or three years later Mabel Edith died of consumption, the normal end to a life of that kind.

CHAPTER XXX

MOTORS AND MOTORING

T may be readily imagined that with my mechanical tastes the advent of the motor appealed very strongly to me. Indeed it

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satisfied two tastes in one, as not only was it an ingenious and interesting piece of mechanism which one could control oneself, but also it served the purpose of touring the country which always had been a passion with me. In my schooldays I had walked from Winchester to Pembroke Lodge at the beginning of one holidays. I had started bicycling in 1880 and had covered many thousands of miles of country that way. I had explored the river Thames from the Nore Light to Lechlade in one form of vessel or another, and I had traversed the high seas in my brave little yacht. After 1890 when I learned to drive a horse again, I had done a great deal of touring with a pair of horses and a light four-wheel Scotch dogcart, but one hundred miles a week was pretty good travelling for this mode of conveyance. All this of course quite apart from many journeyings by rail and steamer to Naples, Sicily, Malta, Switzerland, and America. No wonder then that I fell greedily upon the prospect which motoring held out.

My first purchase was a little 2 h.p. Benz, a queer contraption with two seats back to back mounted on four bicycle wheels, a single cylinder engine which you started by pulling round the fly wheel, an apology for a carburettor, practically no compression, belt transmission, and unreliable brakes. No motorist who has graduated on a Benz has any reason to be afraid of tackling any other kind of car. Sometimes the engine started, sometimes it did not sometimes it would continue to run fairly well, at other times the miserable horse-power or so which was available for use dwindled away to nothing. Luckily at Maidenhead where I then was most of the country was fairly flat. When you came to a hill you used the crypto gear, and if the hill was not more than one in twenty perhaps the car went up it. If it was more you ran alongside and pushed the car, and ultimately one of two things happened ;

either the engine stopped or the belt broke. What a lot I learned about mending belts on the infernal little beast! If the roads were two inches deep in mud or if you had a strong wind against you you could hardly hold the high gear even on the level. None the less I used it fairly regularly to travel from Amberley Cottage to Hanwell Asylum, of which I was at that time Chairman, and was pleased if it could be got to travel at 12 miles an hour, which was then the legal limit. The thing had solid tyres of course, so that at any rate one was free from puncture trouble.

In 1900 I brought back with me from America an 8 h.p. HaynesApperson made at Kokomo, Illinois. This was an enormous improvement, it was larger, it had pneumatics, it had two cylinders and it could go about 20 miles an hour. Its principal disadvantage was the method of engaging the gears; the sliding fingers had tiny friction bands; these were perpetually going wrong. I did a great many miles on it, however, and was very proud of it. It accomplished one feat that I never knew another motor-car capable of—the rotten American castings let water into my cylinder, and it ran home fairly well with a leak into the cylinder so large that as soon as it became stationary the whole of the cooling water drained off. This is really true, although it sounds rather like the story of the Ford car from the factory which was being tried and came to a standstill after ten miles when it was discovered that it had been sent out with an empty petrol tank, and the representative of the Company blandly explained that it had run that distance on its reputation.

My next purchase was a car I bought from S. F. Edge, which had an international reputation having run second in some continental race. It was so perfectly hideous that I think it is worth reproducing as an example of the best that could be done in 1902.

When I first drove this car I was terrified by its appalling speed and feeling of power. Even at second speed one felt as if it was running away with one, so ferociously fast did it appear in those days. I had called my first car Pegasus, because its controls were rather like the wooden pegs by which that flying steed was controlled, but this one I named Atalanta, fleet of foot. It had one appalling and incredible fitment, a large shoe brake operating directly upon the outside of the pneumatic tyre. It stopped the car, but generally destroyed the tyre. However, on this machine I also did many thousands of miles.

By this time, Edge, who was very progressive, and a magnificent salesman, had got into touch with Napier who made his coin weighing