e merely ornamental.
Throughout the political career of her husband she was his helpmate, and
as an officer of the Primrose League, as an editor of the _Anglo-Saxon
Review_, as, for many hot, weary months in Durban Harbor, the head
of the hospital ship _Maine_, she has shown an acute mind and real
executive power. At the polls many votes that would not respond to the
arguments of the husband, and later of the son, were gained over to the
cause by the charm and wit of the American woman.

In his earlier days, if one can have days any earlier than those he now
enjoys, Churchill was entirely influenced by two things: the tremendous
admiration he felt for his father, which filled him with ambition to
follow in his orbit, and the camaraderie of his mother, who treated him
less like a mother than a sister and companion.

Indeed, Churchill was always so precocious that I cannot recall the time
when he was young enough to be Lady Randolph's son; certainly, I cannot
recall the time when she was old enough to be his mother.

When first I knew him he had passed through Harrow and Sandhurst and was
a second lieutenant in the Queen's Own Hussars. He was just of age, but
appeared much younger.

He was below medium height, a slight, delicate-looking boy; although, as
a matter of fact, extremely strong, with blue eyes, many freckles, and
hair which threatened to be a decided red, but which now has lost its
fierceness. When he spoke it was with a lisp, which also has changed,
and which now appears to be merely an intentional hesitation.

His manner of speaking was nervous, eager, explosive. He used many
gestures, some of which were strongly reminiscent of his father, of
whom he, unlike most English lads, who shy at mentioning a distinguished
parent, constantly spoke.

He even copied his father in his little tricks of manner. Standing with
hands shoved under the frock-coat and one resting on each hip as though
squeezing in the waist line; when seated, resting the elbows on the arms
of the chair and nervously locking and unclasping fingers, are tricks
common to both.

He then had and still has a most embarrassing habit of asking many
questions; embarrassing, sometimes, because the questions are so frank,
and sometimes because they lay bare the wide expanse of one's own
ignorance.

At that time, although in his twenty-first year, this lad twice had been
made a question in the House of Commons.

That in itself had rendered him co