It is reported that one of the
few sleepless nights which have ever disturbed the splendidly even and
sane and healthy tenor of this tempestuous and incessantly active life,
was the night before the introduction of the Home Rule Bill. There are
points to be finally settled--clauses to be ultimately fixed--phrases to
be polished or pared at the eleventh hour in all human affairs. Measures
finally settled and fixed for weeks before the last hour exist--like all
perfection--only in the brains and pages of dramatists and novelists.
[Sidenote: Sunburnt, vigorous, self-possessed.]
It was not unnatural under these circumstances that when Mr. Gladstone
made his speech introducing the Home Rule Bill there should have been on
his cheek a pallor deadlier even than that which usually sits upon his
brow. That pallor, by the way, I heard recently, has been characteristic
of him from his earliest years. A schoolfellow from that far-off and
almost pre-historic time when our Grand Old Man was a thin, slim,
introspective and prematurely serious boy at Eton, tells to-day that the
recollection he has of the young Gladstone is of a slight figure, never
running, but always walking with a fast step, with earnest black eyes,
and with a pallid face--the ivory pallor, be it observed, not of
delicacy, but of robustness.
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