'Will
you step into my room if you have anything to discuss?' Another volley
of oaths was the reply, and the unwary parent added that he wasn't
going out, and nobody could put him out. Runciman was not the man to
allow such a challenge of his authority and prowess 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.
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