The door Opened, and a big man was suddenly framed in the opening. He sup ported himself with one hand pressed against the woodwork, the other bearing upon an ivory-handled stick. His great head was poised a little backward upon broad shoulders; his upstanding hair and fine-spun beard were of a tawny hue; the eyes Of a clear blue, their gaze direct and yet as though dwelling upon far things the mouth was full-lipped, the face large and square of jaw. So entered into the dark little room in College Street, Westminster, where he was then editing The National Observer, and into the life of the present writer, one of the greatest forces in English letters of the later Victorian age, William Ernest Henley.