" And then a hurricane of applause.
[Sidenote: A first experience.]
It was impossible not to feel sympathy for Lord Randolph Churchill in
the difficult task of following such a speech. The first thing he had to
do was to bear testimony to the extraordinary effect the speech had made
upon the House of Commons. It was, he said, a speech "impressive and
entrancing"--two most happily-chosen epithets to describe it. And then
Lord Randolph told a little bit of personal history which was
interesting. In all his Parliamentary career, this was the first time he
had been called upon to immediately follow a speech of Mr. Gladstone. He
would willingly have abandoned the opportunity, for it was a speech
which no man in the House of Commons was capable of confronting. After
it, everything else was bound to fall flat, dull, and unimpressive. Lord
Randolph had the misfortune of having prepared a speech of considerable
length--going into the dead past, forgotten things, and found
himself--almost for the first time in his life--incapable of holding the
attention of the House of Commons. Then the division followed, with 47
of a majority--and loud ringing cheers came from the friends of the
Government--and especially from the Irish benches--represented in the
division by every single member of the party, with the exception of one,
absent on sick leave.
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