AN ANECDOTE OF GLADSTONE.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 2999, 4 February 1881, Page 3

AN ANECDOTE OF GLADSTONE.

The man is more interesting than any of tho parts lie has been called to play ; but we come to understand the man better by seeing how he shapes and moulds these parts. As an orator, his conspicuous merits, beside his striking countenance, dignified action, and a voice full, rich, and admirably modulated, are fertility and readiness. He seems to have always at command an inexhaustible store of ideas, reasons, illustrations, whatever bo the subject he is required to deal with. Of all great English speakers, probably no one, not even William Pitt, has been so independent of preparation. Even Fox, swift and rushing as he was, was great only in reply, when his feelings were heated by the atmosphere of battle; whereas Mr Gladstone is just as animated and forcible in an opening, or in a purely ornamental and uncontentious harangue as in the midst of parliamentary strife. Of the many anecdotes that are current illustrating his amazing power of rising to au occasion, one may be given which has the merit of being true. On the afternoon when he was to make an important motion in tho House of Commons, a friend happening to call on i him between two and three o'clock, found him just sitting down to make some notes of tho coming speech. He laid aside his pen and talked for i ft while, then jotted down a few heads on

paper, wont down to the House before four o'clock* found himself drawn into a preliminary controversy of a very trying nature, in which he had a repol so many questions and attacks that it was past six before he rose to inako tho great speech. He then discovered that, as lie had left his eye-glasses at homo, his notos were practically useless, put them quietly back into his coat pookot, and delivered with no aid to his memory, and upon that one hour's preparation, a powerful argument interspersed with passages of wonderful passion and pathos, which lasted for three hours, and will always rank among his finest efforts. —Scribner's Monthly.