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“Stand back!” I said to the Irish photographer. I took a run and hurled my shoulder against the door. It gave, and I was precipitated into a room—not, as I found afterward, part of the Elizabethan mansion, but a neighboring farmhouse, where the farmer and his family were seated at an evening meal. Their shrieks and yells were piercing, and they believed that the ghosts next door were invading them.... I and the photographer fled without further explanation.

On another day I went down into the country to interview a dear old clergyman, who had reached his hundredth year, and had been at school with the famous Doctor Arnold of Rugby. The old gentleman was stone deaf and for some time could not make out the object of my visit. At last it seemed to dawn on him. “Ah, yes!” he said. “You are the gentleman who is coming to sing at our concert to-night. How very kind of you to come all the way from London!” Vainly I endeavored to explain that I had come to interview him for a London paper. Presently he took me by the arm, and led me into his drawing-room, where a charming old lady was sitting by the fire knitting.