In a
more recent day, Lord Althorpe was able to bear down the hostility of
some of the most powerful orators of his time by a bluff manliness which
no rhetoric could withstand. And so also with Jimmy--his sheer audacity
carries him along the slow, dull, inept, muddy tide of his inarticulate
speech.
[Sidenote: An irrepressible nuisance.]
And curiously enough, it is impossible to put him down. On March 6th he
was commenting on some item which he supposed was in a Post-office
Estimate. It was pointed out to him that the item to which he alluded
was not in that particular vote at all, but in quite another vote, which
came later on. Jimmy, nevertheless, went on to discuss the item as if
nothing had been said. Then the long-suffering Chairman had to be called
in, and he ruled--as every human being would have been bound to
rule--that Jimmy was out of order. Was Jimmy put down? Not the least in
the world. He made an apology, and, as the apology was ample and his
deliverance is slow, the apology enabled him to consume some more
minutes of precious Government time. And then, having failed to find
fault with the estimate for what it did not contain, he proceeded to
assail it for what it did contain.
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