retirement, and occupied the leisure that then presented itself in writing his book on ‘Naval Policy.’  His real chance in life came when he was sent to America for the ‘Daily Mail.’  It was a better chance than it might have been, because that newspaper did not publish his letters at irregular intervals, as usually happens, but in an unbroken daily sequence.  Other excursions followed—­to Egypt, to India, to Turkey, to Germany, to Rennes, to the Soudan—­and the letters, in almost every case, quickly reappeared as a book.

“A rare combination of gifts contributed to Mr Steevens’s success.  To begin with, he had a wonderful power of finding his way quickly through a tangle of complicated detail:  this he owed, no doubt, in large measure to his Oxford training.  He also was one of the few writers who have brought to journalism the talents, and sympathies, and touch hitherto regarded as belonging more properly to the writer of fiction.  It was the dream of Mr T.P.  O’Connor, when he started the ‘Sun,’ to have the happenings of the passing day described in the style of the short-story writer.  The experiment failed, because it was tried on an evening paper with printers clamouring for copy, and the beginning of the story generally had to be written before the end of the story was in sight or the place of the incidents could be determined.  Mr Steevens tried the same experiment under more favourable conditions, and succeeded.  There never were newspaper articles that read more like short stories than his, and at the same time there never were newspaper articles that gave a more convincing impression that the thing happened as the writer described it.”

A more personal note was struck perhaps by a writer in the ’Morning Post’:—­

“Few of the reading public can fail to be acquainted with the merits of his purely journalistic work.  He had carefully developed a great natural gift of observation until it seemed wellnigh an impossibility that he should miss any important detail, however small, in a scene which he was watching.  Moreover, he had a marvellous power of vivid expression, and used it with such a skill that even the dullest of readers could hardly fail to see what he wished them to see.  It is given to some journalists to wield great influence, and few have done more to spread the imperial idea than has been done by Mr Steevens during the last four or five years of his brief life.  Still it must be remembered that, in order to follow journalism successfully, he had to make sacrifices which he undoubtedly felt to be heavy.  His little book, ’Monologues of the Dead,’ can never become popular, since it needs for its appreciation an amount of scholarship which comparatively few possess.  Yet it proves none the less conclusively that, had he lived and had leisure, he would have accomplished great things in literature.  Those who had the privilege of knowing him, however, and above all those who at one period or another in his career