s bear's grease, or other ornament of the toilet. But on Monday
Mr. Gladstone was armed with a large blue bottle--somewhat like one of
those 8 oz. medicine bottles which stand so often beside our beds in
this age of sleeplessness and worry. Nevertheless, Mr. Gladstone and his
wife had miscalculated, for on two occasions only throughout the entire
speech did he have to make application for sustenance to the medicine
bottle. Another precaution which had been taken turned out also to be
unnecessary. The Premier's eyesight is not as good as it was a few years
ago; and he sometimes finds it difficult to read anything but the
biggest print. For this reason, elaborate preparations had been made for
helping his eyesight. On the table before the Speaker's chair there was
a small lamp--somewhat like a student's lamp. This also turned out to be
unnecessary, for the Old Man was able to read his notes without the
smallest difficulty; and the speech had come to a conclusion long before
the hour when the deepening shadows make it hard to read by the light
from the glass roof of the House.

[Sidenote: The peroration.]

At last, the latest details had been given; the Old Man approached his
peroration. By this time the voice had sunk in parts to a low whisper,
and the deathly hue of the beautiful face had grown deeper. There was
something that almost inspired awe as one looked at that strange,
curious, solitary figure in the growing darkness. The intense strain on
the House had finally exhausted it, and there had come a silence that
had in it the solemnity, the strange stillness, the rapt emotion of
some sublime service in a great cathedral rather than the beginning of
one of the fiercest and most rancorous party conflicts of our time. To
this mood Mr. Gladstone attuned the closing words of his speech. The
words came slowly, quietly, gently, sinking at times almost to a
whisper. What fantasies could not one's mind play as one listened to
these words. There was underneath the language, the looks, the voice,
the tragic thought that this was a message rather from the shadow-land
beyond the grave than from this rough, noisy, material world. Imagine
yourself in a country church, the sole visitor in the ghostly silence
and the solemn twilight, with spectres all around you in the memorials
of the dead and memories of the living, and then fancy the organist
silently stealing, also alone, to the organ, and giving out to the
evening air some beau