But from that time onward he struck a new and
deeper note in his writings than he had ever done
before. He had drtmk deep of the waters of life,
and no matter what joy the future had in store for
him — ^and it had much — ^the world was never again
quite the same place to him that it had been before
this sore stroke of fate befell him, and he was left,
in John Bright's classic phrase, "with none living
of his own household save a motherless babe.''

Black learned, as so many men similarly placed
have learned before and since, that the only as-
suagement of his pain was to be found in work ; so
into work he flung himself with renewed energy
after the death of his wife and the breaking up of
his home at Hounslow. The seven weeks' war
between Prussia and Austria was the chief event
of the summer of 1866, and he secured a commission
from the Star to write letters from Germany on the
subject. It would hardly be correct to speak of him

45



WILLIAM BLACK

as a " war correspondent. " Certainly, in the modem
sense of the word, he was not that. He did not ride
or march with the advance-guard of either army,
telegraphing from the field descriptions more or
less imaginary of the struggles of the opposing
troops. To begin with, there was no telegraphic
correspondence from battle-fields in those days;
and if there had been. Black was not the man to
supply the public with it. What he did during his
brief experience in this campaign of 1866 was to
follow the Prussian army with the hospital staff in
its advance into Austria, and to write descriptions
of the scenes he witnessed that were none the less
truthful and graphic because in some cases he pre-
sented them to the readers of the Star under the
guise of fiction. He never republished these sketches
of a country in the midst of war; but some of them
were singularly bright and vivid, and it is not sur-
prising that they attracted the attention of the pub-
lic, and brought his name into greater prominence
among the journalists of the day than had attached
to it previously. 