COLONEL NORTH'S GREAT BALL 319 



associated with the " Savages " without deriving con- 

 siderable personal benefit. 



All was going fairly well with the paper. In this, its 

 latest stage, Raymond Radclyffe had joined me, as the 

 financial editor, he taking sole charge of the business side 

 of the paper and I of the editorial. He is a singularly 

 able man, and we seemed fairly on the highway to fortune, 

 for just at the end of that year, 1888, there came the glad 

 news that Phil May had returned to Europe and was at 

 Rome. He never thought of working for any but his 

 first friends, and, though he was staying to study in 

 Rome, he wrote to say he would send sketches from there 

 regularly. This was good news indeed, for he had made 

 a great name in Australia, where they appreciated his 

 genius much more rapidly than did the English people. 



It so happened that Colonel North was going to give 

 a tremendous fancy dress ball at the Metropole Hotel 

 on the 4th January 1889, and that was when the nitrate 

 boom was in full blast. Everyone, from highest to lowest, 

 was running after the jovial Colonel, for the nitrate 

 companies kept coming out in rapid succession and the 

 shares were always at two or three premium as soon as the 

 prospectus had appeared. If you could only obtain an 

 allotment of some of them you had nothing to do but sell, 

 and rake in your profit. How it was all managed I have 

 no idea, but if you had money enough to pay the applica- 

 tion amount for whatever number of shares you wanted, 

 and were sufficiently in favour to get some portion of them 

 allotted, you could make your profit forthwith. 



Now it occurred to me that it would be really great to 

 have Phil May at Colonel North's ball, and I wrote to the 

 Colonel asking him if he would stand the expense of bring- 

 ing him over from Rome. He asked what that would 

 amount to. I replied suggesting 50, which was little 

 enough in all conscience, but Colonel North, who was 

 not a self-advertiser, by nature, didn't think it good 

 enough. I received that answer from him at the Junior 

 Carlton Club, where he was surrounded by such as Lord 



