the night before he introduced his second great Home Rule Bill. And it
should be added that, stirring and eloquent as were the opening
sentences, they were not listened to by the House with that
extraordinary enthusiasm which, on other occasions, sentences of this
splendid eloquence would have elicited. For what really the House wanted
to learn was the great enigma which had been kept for seven long
years--in spite of protests, hypocritical appeals, and, ofttimes,
tedious remonstrance from over-zealous and over-fussy friends.

[Sidenote: The Bill.]

By the time Mr. Gladstone had got to the Bill, he had exhausted a good
deal of his stock of voice, and yet he seemed to be less dependent than
usual on the mysterious compound which Mrs. Gladstone mixes with her own
wifely hand for those solemn occasions. It appeared that both she and
her husband had somewhat dreaded the ordeal. The bottle which Mr.
Gladstone usually brings with him is about the size of those small,
stunted little jars in which, in the days of our youth, the young buck
kept his 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