For what really the House wanted to learn was the great enigma which had been kept for seven long years--in spite of protests, hypocritical appeals, and, ofttimes, tedious remonstrance from over-zealous and over-fussy friends.
[Sidenote: The Bill.] By the time Mr.Gladstone had got to the Bill, he had exhausted a good deal of his stock of voice, and yet he seemed to be less dependent than usual on the mysterious compound which Mrs.Gladstone mixes with her own wifely hand for those solemn occasions.

It appeared that both she and her husband had somewhat dreaded the ordeal.

The bottle which Mr.
Gladstone usually brings with him is about the size of those small, stunted little jars in which, in the days of our youth, the young buck kept his bear's grease, or other ornament of the toilet.

But on Monday Mr.Gladstone was armed with a large blue bottle--somewhat like one of those 8 oz.

medicine bottles which stand so often beside our beds in this age of sleeplessness and worry.