Gladstone's face throughout that long morning sitting of Friday, March
10th. There are some days that live in one's memory, not so much as days
as nights--with the ghastly spectres of darkness--nightmares--hauntings
of a hideous past--anticipations of a joyless future. Such that Friday
remains in my memory--with Mr. Gladstone's face standing out from the
surrounding figures--pale, remote, pained.

[Sidenote: The G.O.M. as a lecturer.]

The announcement of the following Monday came only as a surprise to
those who had not been fully behind the scenes. There were few, who knew
the impression that the Friday had made, who did not feel sure that the
game of pushing the Home Rule Bill on before Easy Easter was up, and
that Mr. Gladstone had been beaten by the sheer brutality of
Obstruction. But still hope springs eternal in the Irish breast, and
there was still the lingering feeling that Mr. Gladstone would make a
further and more desperate effort to break down one of the most
shameless crusades of Obstruction on which a great party had ever
entered. Indeed, Mr. Gladstone himself was responsible for a rise in the
temperature of his own party on the very evening of that fateful and
fatal Friday morning, when obstruction and the abandonment of their own
friends had so nearly driven the Government out of office. I could
scarcely believe my eyes when at nine o'clock on that day I came down to
the almost empty House--in these evening sittings the House always looks
about as cheerful as a theatre at mid-day--and saw Mr. Gladstone on the
Treasury Bench, almost radiant, and evidently full of speech, go, and
spirit. There wasn't really the smallest necessity for his presence.
Nothing stood on the paper save one of those harmless, futile motions
which are discussed with about as much interest by the House generally,
as "abstract love"--to use a bold figure of Labby in a recent debate.
It was a motion which complained that private members did not get
sufficient time. Considering that private members had used their
privileges for some two weeks previously to destroy the very foundation
of all representative Government--namely, that the majority shall
prevail--the complaint seemed a little audacious. Anyhow, a debate upon
it could lead nowhere. But the moment the resolution was proposed, up
stood the Grand Old Man, and delivered a bright, sparkling little
academical address, for all the world like the lecture of a very
_spirituel_ French