He could not have endured to sit for two or three hours at a time with his hat over his eyes, pretending to listen, as is the duty of a good legislator.

He was a man intolerant of tedium, and in the best of his time impatient of slow work.

Nor, though his liberal feelings were very strong, were his political convictions definite or accurate.

He was a man who mentally drank in much, feeding his fancy hourly with what he saw, what he heard, what he read, and then pouring it all out with an immense power of amplification.

But it would have been impossible for him to study and bring home to himself the various points of a complicated bill with a hundred and fifty clauses.