His address was quiet, brief, and graceful.

With charming modesty, he acknowledged the mistake he had made, and explained how, in running over in memory the hundreds of speeches he had delivered, he had confounded one speech with another.

He was unable to understand how his memory, which never before had played him false, had done him this ill turn, and he appealed to the House generally, and declared that there was not even amongst his bitter political foes one who would think him capable of trying to palm off on the House a speech which could be so palpably and so readily exposed.

In these few sentences, Mr.Dillon brought before the House his strange, picturesque, and chequered career.

His oratory was such that the explanation was considered the best ever given in the House of Commons.
[Sidenote: Joe is absent.] This was a recovery of some ground lost on the previous night.