It affected me like some intense piece of irony.

It was like hearing a dying man talk of the year after next.

I had the sense of the unreality of things strong upon me.

Why should nightingale upon nightingale pour out volley upon volley of song for the delight of a politician whose heart was not in his task of keeping back the waters of the deluge, but who grew animated at the idea of damning one of the titans who had let loose the deluge?
About a week after--or it may have been a fortnight--Churchill wrote to me and asked me to take him to see the Jenkins of my Jenkins story.

It was one of those ordeals that one goes through when one has tried to advance one's friends.