SIDE LIGHTS
By
JAMES RUNCIMAN
WITH MEMOIR BY GRANT ALLEN,
AND INTRODUCTION BY W.T. STEAD.
EDITED BY JOHN F. RUNCIMAN
London
T. FISHER UNWIN
PATERNOSTER SQUARE
MDCCCXCIII
CONTENTS.
A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR.BY GRANT ALLEN
AN INTRODUCTORY WORD ABOUT THE BOOK.BY W.T. STEAD
- LETTER-WRITERS
- ON WRITING ONESELF OUT
- THE DECLINE OF LITERATURE
- COLOUR-BLINDNESS IN LITERATURE
- THE SURFEIT OF BOOKS
- PEOPLE WHO ARE "DOWN"
- ILL-ASSORTED MARRIAGES
- HAPPY MARRIAGES
- SHREWS
- ARE WE WEALTHY
- THE VALUES OF LABOUR
- THE HOPELESS POOR
- WAIFS AND STRAYS
- STAGE-CHILDREN
- PUBLIC AND PRIVATE MORALITY: PAST AND PRESENT
- "RAISING THE LEVEL OF AMUSEMENTS"
- A LITTLE SERMON ON FAILURES
- "VANITY OF VANITIES"
- GAMBLERS
- SCOUNDRELS
- QUIET OLD TOWNS
- THE SEA
- SORROW
- DEATH
- JOURNALISM
BY GRANT ALLEN.
I knew James Runciman but little, and that little for the most part in the way of business. But no one could know that ardent and eager soul at all, no matter how slightly, without admiring and respecting much that was powerful and vigorous in his strangely-compounded personality. His very look attracted. He had human weaknesses not a few, but all of the more genial and humane sort; for he was essentially and above everything a lovable man, a noble, interesting, and unique specimen of genuine, sincere, whole-hearted manhood.
He was a Northumbrian by birth, "and knew the Northumbrian coast," says one of his North-Country friends, "like his mother's face." His birthplace was at Cresswell, a little village near Morpeth, where he was born in August, 1852, so that he was not quite thirty-nine when he finally wore himself out with his ceaseless exertions. He had a true North-Country education, too, among the moors and cliffs, and there drank in to the full that love of nature, and especially of the sea, which forms so conspicuous a note in his later writings. Heather and wave struck the keynotes. A son of the people, he went first, in his boyh