His Exuberant Verbosity.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 7072, 18 February 1893, Page 2

His Exuberant Verbosity.

A newspaper reporter of .great experience writes .-—“ Mr Gladstone will make a speech on the smallest provocation and nnder the most depressing or disadvantageous circumstances. I have hoard him in the wild valley of Gleneres make a speech, bare-headed, and in the main, to a number of reformatory boys iu response to the appeal from his wife : * Do say a few words to them, William.’ I have hoard him harangue a number of noisy students in the grounds of Trinity College because one or two of tho loudest-tongued veiled out ‘.A speech, a speech!’ I have heard him speak from a railway carriage window in Scotland in answer to a cheer, and deliver a column ia reply to a sneer from Mr Chaplin, from his place in the House of Commons. He will speak, too, upon any subject. During a visit to Maynooth, in au unofficial capacity, ho delivered a speech in the shape of a string of comments in every room he walked through and on almost every object of interest brough before bis nolice, in the library he addressed a dozen professors on the literature of Ireland, taking occasion to put forth a plea for the preservation of the Celtic language. In the new chapel be held forth on the various styles of architecture, to friends, ecclesiastics, and stonemasons, and oven in the kitchen he was not without idor.e He examined culinary utensils and cooking apparatus with the care and atten* fion bo wou d have devoted to tho inspection of a budget or of some new and intricate piece of financial machinery, and be let off & lecture on the subject of cooking, to the undisguised delight of Mrs Gladstone, who probably takes to herself the credit of expanding his mind on this question The right hon. gentleman is always intense, whether speaking to peasants in a third-class railway carriage, to boys at the Artane Industrial Schools the students at the London Hospital, or unfolding some scheme of foreign policy on the floor of the House of Commons." •