e was widely read in and thoroughly conversant with all
the political events and controversies of both his own generation and
of the one before it. A political meeting was to him what a
public-house is to the habitual drunkard; he could not pass it. He
never spoke in public himself, but he longed to do so with a longing
that was intense as it was hopeless. He knew his limitations, and was
quite conscious that his English was not that of the platform.

Little Eloquent could never remember when he first began to hear the
names that were afterwards to be the most familiar household words to
him. Two names, two personalities ever stood out in memory as an
integral part of his child-life--those of William Ewart Gladstone and
John Bright.

These were his father's idols.

They glowed, fixed planets in the political firmament, stable,
unquenchable, a lamp to the feet of the faithful. Each shining with a
steady radiance that the divergence in their views on many points could
neither confuse nor obscure.

The square, dogged, fighting face of the man of peace; the serene,
scholarly, aquiline features of the great Liberal leader were familiar
to the little boy as the face of his own father.

That John Bright died when Eloquent was about six made no difference in
his influence. There were two likenesses of him in the sitting-room,
and under one of these the words were inscribed: "Be just and fear
not"; and Eloquent, who was brought up to look upon justice as the
first of political virtues, used to wonder wistfully whether such
fearlessness could be achieved by one whose face at present showed none
of those characteristics of force, strength, and pugnacity manifested
in the portraits of the great commoner. But he found comfort in the
reflection that "Dada," mirror of all the virtues, was yet quite mild
and almost insignificant in appearance; a small, stout, dapper, very
clean-looking little tradesman, with trim white whiskers, a bald head,
and a round, rosy face, wherein shrewd, blue eyes twinkled cheerfully.

No, dada bore not the slightest resemblance either to Mr Gladstone or
Mr Bright, and yet, Eloquent reflected, "what a man he was!" Dada was
the chief factor in Eloquent's little world--law-giver, lover, and
friend.

It is probable that his childhood would have been more normal and less
politically precocious had his mother lived. But she died when he was
four years old, a fortnight after the birth of a little s