Birmingham
(November 1888). It was a great gathering of lieutenants and leading
supporters from, every part of the country. Here is a note of mine:--

On the day of the great meeting in Bingley Hall, somebody came to
say that Mr. Gladstone wanted to know if I could supply him with a
certain passage from a speech of Lord Hartington's. I found him in
his dressing-gown, conning his notes and as lively as youth. He
jumped up and pressed point after point on me, as if I had been a
great public meeting. I offered to go down to the public library
and hunt for the passage; he deprecated this, but off I went, and
after some search unearthed the passage, and copied it out. In the
evening I went to dine with him before the meeting. He had been
out for a short walk to the Oratory in the afternoon to call on
Cardinal Newman. He was not allowed, he told me, to see the
cardinal, but he had had a long talk with Father Neville. He found
that Newman was in the habit of reading with a reflector candle,
but had not a good one. "So I said I had a good one, and I sent it
round to him." He was entirely disengaged in mind during dinner,
ate and drank his usual quantity, and talked at his best about all
manner of things. At the last moment he was telling us of John
Hunter's confirmation, from his own medical observation, of
Homer's remark about Dolon; a bad fellow, whose badness Homer
explains by the fact that he was a brother brought up among
sisters only:--

{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH VARIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA~}{~GREEK KORONIS~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH PERISPOMENI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON WITH PSILI AND OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH VARIA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER KAPPA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL L