LARKIN.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 1186, 18 December 1913, Page 4

LARKIN.

A CHARACTER SKETCH

The following interesting sketch of parkin is given by a correspondent of the Nation :—“A tall man, large boned, powerful, and net in the least fat, he seems to make his way through a crowd by force of personality. In the face, the nose is large and prominent, running up between the eyebrows into the forehead ; the mouth very wide and irregularly cut, with just a suspicion of the shark about it — of a positive cruelty, or at all events, of an absence of any sensitive consideration for a fallen enemy or a friend at variance ; the bluish-grey eyes, rather small and narrow, sometimes glauciug sideways as though expecting a treacherous attack. Rather deep single lines down the cheeks, and horizontal along the forehead, which is low and partly hidden by the hair hanging carelessly over the right side. The hair itselt, always untidy, is a common brown, hardly touched with grey ; but though he is still under 40, he looks older. The skin is reddishbrown all over, but of a quality that shows invariable sobriety. One must call him eloquent, but his eloquence is quite different from Ben Tibet's, or from Lloyd George’s, as I used to hear him in the old pro-Boer days. It is more like what Johu Burns’ used to be. Ben Tibet speaks like a Frenchman, with all his chest and shoulders, Lloyd George used to remind me of a large hawk, soaring ever up and up on airy spirals of language. Larkin has John Burns’ gift of always speaking in things instead of in phrases. He uses no abstractions, no general ideas. It is the solid, concrete thing that he has before his mind. Most people speak in length and breadth ; he is a ‘cubist,’ and speaks in thickness. The voice is loud, harsh, and quite untrained, but in describing the miseries of the Dublin poor it can sink to quiet solemnity. There is no pose or study of effect about his gestures. He is a sincere and en tirely ungraceful speaker. Nor has his speech any construction or form. He goes charging on with the elan of a natural force, catching, not at ideas, but at the pictured things or persons that in careless succession pteseut themselves to his mind ; olten harking back, often rising to indignant rage, easily yielding to the scornful pride that Irishmen usually display iu addressing a humble audience of mere Knglishmeu,”