Gladstone
on the Thursday night previous. It may at once be asked why Mr.
Chamberlain should have thought it necessary to notice the article. He
boasted that he was not in the habit of noticing what appeared against
him in the newspapers--which is not true to a certain extent, or at
least is not generally so thought, for it is understood that no man
reads more carefully the extracts sent to him by those press-cutting
agencies which have added either a new luxury or a new terror to public
life. But Mr. Chamberlain's action had many roots. First, like many
others, very free in their comments and attacks, he is almost childishly
sensitive. Watch him in the House of Commons when an attack is being
made upon him which he does not like, and the fierce and domineering
temper reveals itself in the fidgety movement, the darkened brow, the
deeper pallor on the white-complexioned face. When he was a Cabinet
Minister he could never, or rarely, be got to remain in the House of
Commons during the whole of the evening; and one of the chief reasons, I
have heard, he gave for thus absenting himself was that he could not
stand the talk from the opposite side--it made him so angry.
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