The memories of that adventurous year in Turkey come thronging back so quickly that it is hard to choose amongst them. In the retrospect it looks as if it had been in the main a rather jolly sort of picnic, and at least there were streaks of splendid enjoyment in it Even our hardships made fun for us at times. I suppose you can know more about a man in a month if you go campaigning with him than you might find out in the course of years in a mere stay-at-home existence. Little generosities and selfishnesses display themselves more freely when commons are running short and shelter is scanty than they do amongst those who, in the phrase of Tennyson's northern farmer, “has coats to their backs, and takes their regular meals.” One British gentlemen we had with us during the siege of Plevna was a perpetual source of joy to me. He was a sort of human jackdaw, the picker-up of unconsidered trifles; and especially in the way of provender and of medical comforts he took care to be well provided whatever might befall the rest of us. It happened one day during the siege that some member of our party discovered in some huckster's shop in the village a couple of bottles of rum. He bore these triumphantly to the two-storeyed hut in which the greater number of us lived together, and that night we held a symposium. The liquor was vile stuff, but we set fire to it and burned most of the malice out of it. I made a ballad about that night a year or two later, and perhaps I may be forgiven if I quote a verse or two of it here. It gives at least a fair picture of the scene.

The rum was all drunk and the wine-gourds were all empty—the last song was sung and the last tale told, and we betook ourselves to rest. Our jackdaw friend, for economic reasons, had found a lodging elsewhere. He found it better to drop in upon the rest of us when there was anything special going than it would have been to forage for himself. By the time at which he left us, it had turned much colder, and the rain was freezing as it fell. The village streets were covered with a slippery verglas and here and there, where a siege shell had fallen, there was an embarrassing hole, not easily to be distinguished in the night-time from the merest puddle. There was scarcely a light agleam in the whole village, and it is not at all a thing to be surprised at that our jackdaw lost his way and had a stumble or two into the icy pools which beset him. He did succeed at last in finding the hut in which he lived, or rather, he found the site of it, for an 18 centimetre shell had burst there in his absence and the hut was not. We were making our apology for breakfast in the dusk before dawn when he returned to us. He was clothed in a thin armour of ice from head to foot and it trickled from him in little showers as he stood forlornly before us. The hardest heart must needs have pitied him, but it was he himself who gave the pathos of the show away. “Has nobody got a cup of tea?” he asked. “Tea,” cried Bond Moore, who had a special mis-liking for him, “tea, you———” (the blank may be filled in according to fancy, on the understanding that it was neither polite nor complimentary) “there's no tea within five hundred miles.” “Oh!” said the unhappy man, “I wish I had never come on this campaign, I do so miss my little comforts!” There was nobody there, I am sure, who would have been much shocked if, in the circumstances, our jackdaw had been even blasphemously profane. A man in his condition may say almost anything and may expect to be forgiven, but at this most inadequate bleat we yelled with laughter, and the poor jackdaw stood staring at us with eyes of suffering wonder for a full three minutes before we could rouse ourselves to attend to his necessities.

When I first went out to Turkey I was very much under the domination of Mr Gladstone's opinion. I was quite full of the unspeakable Turk and his wickednesses and was quite as anxious as the great Liberal statesman himself to see the “sick man” bundled out of Europe bag and baggage. But when I began to move about the country and to meet, as I was forced to do, men of all sorts and conditions among its native population, my sentiments with respect to the Turk underwent a thorough and rapid change. The real people, the men of the commercial and artisan classes and the rank and file of the army, are amongst the best people I have ever known. Their religion enjoins them to sobriety, and as a race they are brave, truthful and kindly, and I never met one authentic instance in which an act of cruelty was chargeable to the men of the regular forces. The hordes of Bashi-Bazouks, of Smyrniotes and Tripolites were of course a set of most unspeakable ruffians, and there are probably no more deplorable specimens of human nature in the world than are to be found among the Paris-bred spawn of the harem.

Almost immediately on my return to London I lunched with Canon Liddon of St Paul's. Our talk naturally turned upon the campaign, and in the course of it I gave him an account of the affair at Guemlik, as being typical of whatever disturbances had taken place between the citizen Turk and the Bulgarians. When General Gourko first broke into the great plain south of the Balkans with his Cossack advance guard, the Christian population rose rejoicingly to receive them and persuaded themselves without difficulty that the rule of their Mahommedan masters was dead and done with then and there. They were supplied with arms and were urged to revolt. There is no doubt whatever that they had a great deal to complain of. They had been under the heel of official oppression for centuries, although in that respect they were not much worse off than their Mahommedan neighbours, but they were a despised and abject race who ate forbidden food and who lived in an almost inconceivable condition of personal uncleanness. To the Turkish peasant dirt is anathema maranatha; in his own station of life he is the cleanest man in the world, and if there is any dirtier person to be found than a Bulgarian peasant, as I knew him in the war year, I can only say that I have not yet discovered him. The Christian population (God save the mark!) were forbidden by law to bear arms, and they were cowards by tradition. Villagers of the two races lived peacefully enough together, though there was an open disdain on the one side always and a smouldering hatred on the other.

It befell that in a neighbouring village the Bulgarians broke into revolution, and all the able-bodied Turks in Guemlik sallied out to the assistance of their countrymen, leaving only a few infirm old men and the women and children. The Guemlik Christians, being persuaded that the fighting force would never return, rose en masse and put every Turkish soul to death. The massacre was characterised by a terrible ferocity; the bodies of the dead were hideously mutilated and were all hurled pell-mell into the well at the Turkish end of the village, and all the houses of that quarter were looted and burned down. Contrary to the expectations of the victors, the Turkish residents returned triumphant. They took their revenge; they put the Christians to the sword, fired the Christian houses, and filled up the Christian well with corpses. The account was quite equally balanced, but it is certain that the Bulgarians made the first move in the game. It was so everywhere, so far as my experience went, wherever the citizen Turk was drawn into the conflict Nothing viler than the conduct of the Government in letting loose its vast hordes of irregular soldiery with license to slay and pillage an unarmed population could possibly be conceived. But what I was concerned to prove was that the Mahommedan villagers had no part or lot in the cruelties of that time unless by way of stern reprisal.

Canon Liddon was anxious that I should lay my facts before Mr Gladstone. He despatched a telegram to him and ascertained that he would be willing to receive me at Hawarden on the morrow, and armed with a brief letter of introduction, I set out next day, and found the great Liberal statesman placidly dozing in an armchair in a little study on the ground floor of the house. At first he hardly seemed to recognise why I was there, but in less than a minute he became astonishingly alert, and providing himself with hat and walking-stick took me out into the park. He walked at an extraordinary pace and plied me with questions in those ringing, rolling, parliamentary tones of his, with which I had been familiar in the House of Commons two or three years before. He could not for one instant lay aside his platform manner, and before I had been in his society for two minutes I appreciated the statement attributed to Her late Majesty Queen Victoria, that Mr Gladstone always addressed her as if she were a public meeting. Every sentence was rounded, polished and precise, every syllable had its particular rhythmic weight and value, and with it all there was a certain suavity and courtesy which, for my own part, I thought very gracious and charming. I had heard one of his remarkable Budget speeches and knew already with what ease he handled figures, but he surprised me more than once by his quickness in calculation. He was questioning me as to Turkish methods of taxation: population of a province so many—piastres per head of population so many—what was the precise value of the piastre? Twopence and a fraction of a farthing.—Ah! in pounds sterling that would be approximately so much. He made his reckoning with lightning rapidity and he was always accurate, as I could tell, having all the figures at my fingers' ends just then.

After two hours' hard walking, he took me in to luncheon. We were by this time in the thick of our theme, and on our arrival at table he banished the servants from the room and himself carved at the sideboard and handed round the dishes. H e ate his own meal standing, and he carried on his questions all the while. I do not know if he had then made his famous rule about the seventy-two bites to a mouthful, but I certainly thought him anything but deliberate in eating. Whether he took much or little I could not tell, but he was certainly talking all the time, and I shall never forget the noble sonorosity of the tone with which he approached me with a dish in either hand and asked': “Can I assist you to another potato, Mr Murray?” The simple query was offered in the finest parliamentary manner. There were present at the meal the members of the family and one guest beside myself, a Mr Howard, a corpulent, silent gentleman, who accompanied us when we went out into the park again. We recommenced our walk at about two o'clock, and kept it up until the evening shades were growing pretty thick about us. I was inclined to be pretty glad when it was over, for though I was as hard as nails at that time, being fresh as I was from the severe training of the campaign, I was walked almost off my legs. The talk went on ding-dong all the time, and in the course of it my host asked me with what weapons the Zaptiehs—the mounted police who were relied on to keep order—and the irregulars who were committing unchecked atrocities everywhere, were respectively armed. I was compelled to tell him that the Zaptiehs carried an old-fashioned matchlock, whilst the Irregulars were in great part armed with the Winchester repeating rifle, which was then the latest invention of destructive science. The corpulent visitor had long since resigned the effort to keep within hearing. Gladstone faced round, and in those noble, oratorical tones of his called out, “Is it not odious, Howard; is it not odious?” The gentleman appealed to was utterly out of earshot, and came trotting briskly towards us to find out what the question meant, but Gladstone was away again at score, and he was again out-distanced in a minute. Gladstone spoke of the duty which was imposed upon him to turn out the Government of Lord Beaconsfield, of whom he invariably spoke as Mr Disraeli. I ventured to say to him, “You will have to fight for that, sir,” when he turned upon me with a most vivid gesture, and striking his walking-stick upon the pathway with such vehemence that he made the gravel fly, answered me, “Aye, sir, and we shall fight.” When the time came for me to go, he accompanied me to the hall, and with great courtesy assisted me into my overcoat with his own hands. It was a rather remarkable-looking garment, that overcoat, and one of a sort not often seen in England, but I had passed through London so rapidly that I had had no time to replenish my wardrobe. The garment itself was woven of camel's hair, and it was lined with bearskin. As he was helping me into it he asked, “Where did you obtain possession of this extraordinary garment, Mr Murray?” “I bought it, sir, in Bulgaria,” I answered. “Ah,” said he, with a perfectly grave face and falling back a step to look at it, “I have had much to say of the Bulgarian atrocities of late years, but this is the only one of which I have had ocular demonstration.”

I met Mr Gladstone afterwards at a big social function which was engineered by the late William Woodhall, some time member for Stoke and Master of the Ordnance. Finding him unoccupied and alone, I ventured to ask to be recalled to his remembrance. “No need for that, Mr Murray,” he answered, “no need for that,” and plunged back straightway into the talk at Hawarden as if it had taken place only yesterday. There were all manner of amusements provided for Mr Wood-hall's guests, and into one of them at least he plunged with the delighted enthusiasm of a boy.

Poor Charles Bertram, the conjurer, was there, and it was arranged that a hand of Napoleon should be played under his direction between the statesman and Sir Francis Burnand, then editor of Punch. “You, gentlemen, must decide between you,” said the conjurer, “as to who is to win.” It was agreed that Gladstone was to be the victor, and Bertram, who, of course, had not apparently seen the cards, instructed him as to what he was to lead and what to play in sequence, securing for him all five tricks out of an apparently impossible hand. He was immensely delighted and interested, and held a very animated conversation afterwards with Bertram on the art of conjuring.

A good many years later yet, when I brought over from Australia the nucleus of a comedy company to perform here in a piece of my own writing, I had amongst them a very remarkable child actor, whose name was Leo Byrne. He played the title rÔle in my comedy of Neds Churn, and when the provincial run of the piece was over he was employed by Sir Henry Irving to play the child's part in Lord Tennyson's tragedy of Becket. Mr Gladstone was present at one performance, and not wishing for some reason of his own to be identified by the public, took his seat out of view of the audience on the prompt side of the stage. Whilst the curtain was down, Mr Gladstone took the fictitious son of the Fair Rosamund on his knee and began to question him. “You come from Australia, my little man?” he said. “Yes, sir,” the boy answered. “And what do you think of England?” he was asked. “I think it is being ruined by the Liberal Party,” Master Byrne responded. The great man laughed and suffered him to escape, which I am told he did very willingly. Mr Bram Stoker afterwards took the child apart and told him that one of these days he would be very proud of having been taken on that old gentleman's knee. “Oh! I know,” the imp responded, “it's old Gladstone; I don't want to be bothered with him. I have promised another boy to go and spin tops with him behind the scenes.”