Such that Friday remains in my memory--with Mr.Gladstone's face standing out from the surrounding figures--pale, remote, pained.
[Sidenote: The G.O.M.as a lecturer.] The announcement of the following Monday came only as a surprise to those who had not been fully behind the scenes.

There were few, who knew the impression that the Friday had made, who did not feel sure that the game of pushing the Home Rule Bill on before Easy Easter was up, and that Mr.Gladstone had been beaten by the sheer brutality of Obstruction.

But still hope springs eternal in the Irish breast, and there was still the lingering feeling that Mr.Gladstone would make a further and more desperate effort to break down one of the most shameless crusades of Obstruction on which a great party had ever entered.

Indeed, Mr.Gladstone himself was responsible for a rise in the temperature of his own party on the very evening of that fateful and fatal Friday morning, when obstruction and the abandonment of their own friends had so nearly driven the Government out of office.

I could scarcely believe my eyes when at nine o'clock on that day I came down to the almost empty House--in these evening sittings the House always looks about as cheerful as a theatre at mid-day--and saw Mr.Gladstone on the Treasury Bench, almost radiant, and evidently full of speech, go, and spirit.