nderstand what I shall have to do. This
will be fixed by the scale of the meeting. I see no difficulty but
one--a procession through the principal thoroughfares is one of the
most exhausting processes I know as a _preliminary_ to addressing
a mass meeting. A mass meeting requires the physical powers to be
in their best and freshest state, as far as anything can be fresh
in a man near seventy-two; and I have on one or more former
occasions felt them wofully contracted. In Midlothian I never had
anything of the kind before a great physical effort in speaking;
and the lapse even of a couple of years is something. It would
certainly be most desirable to have the mass meeting first, and
then I have not any fear at all of the procession through whatever
thoroughfares you think fit.

_Oct. 2, 1881._--I should be very sorry to put aside any of the
opportunities of vision at Leeds which the public may care to use;
but what I had hoped was that these might come _after_ any
speeches of considerable effort and not _before_ them. To
understand what a physical drain, and what a reaction from tension
of the senses is caused by a "progress" before addressing a great
audience, a person must probably have gone through it, and gone
through it at my time of life. When I went to Midlothian, I begged
that this might never happen; and it was avoided throughout. Since
that time I have myself been sensible for the first time of a
diminished power of voice in the House of Commons, and others also
for the first time have remarked it.

Vast torchlight processions, addresses from the corporation, four score
addresses from political bodies, a giant banquet in the Cloth Hall Yard
covered in for the purpose, on one day; on another, more addresses, a
public luncheon followed by a mass meeting of over five-and-twenty
thousand persons, then a long journey through dense throngs vociferous
with an exultation that knew no limits, a large dinner party, and at the
end of all a night train. The only concessions that the veteran asked to
weakness of the flesh, were that at the banquet he should not appear until
the eating and drinking were over, and that at the mass meeting some
preliminary speakers should intervene to give him time to take breath
after his long and serious exercises of the morning. When the time came
his voice was heard like the note of a clear a