Never shall I forget the look on Fred Archer's face at the moment when I
saw it--it was but for a second--and yet the impression dwells
ineffaceable upon my memory and imagination. There was a curious mixture
of terror, resolve, hope, despair on the sunken cheeks that was almost
appalling--that look represented, embodied, summed up, as though in some
sudden glimpse of another and a nether world, all the terrible and awful
passions that stormed at the hearts of thousands in the great gambling
panorama all around. And there was something of the same look on the
profile of Mr. Carson--I could almost have pitied him and the party and
traditions and past which he represented as I saw its death-throes
marked on his suffering and fierce face.
But the speech of Mr. Carson was a clever one. Whatever the inner eye
may see in the depths of Mr. Carson's soul, to the outward eye he has an
appearance of a self-possession amounting almost to the offensive. He is
dressed almost as well as Mr. Austen Chamberlain, but, unlike Mr.
Chamberlain's promising lad--who still has much of the graceful shyness
and unsteady nerve of youth--Mr. Carson has all the coolness,
self-assertion, and hardness of the man who has passed through the
fierce and tempestuous conflicts of Irish life.
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