I have before me two or three examples of notes of Mr. Gladstone’s speeches; one of them refers to one of the most important of his addresses on 50 the customs question. It was a long speech, extending, if I remember rightly, to considerably over an hour. Yet the memoranda consist purely of four or five sentences of two or three words apiece, written on a single sheet of note paper, and no hint of the course of the oration is given. Occasionally, no doubt, especially in the case of the speech on the introduction of the Home Rule Bill, which was to my mind the finest Mr. Gladstone has ever delivered, the notes were rather more extensive than this, but as a rule they are extremely brief. When Mr. Gladstone addresses a great public meeting, the most elaborate pains are taken to insure his comfort. He can now only read the very largest print, and careful and delicate arrangements are made to provide him with lamps throwing the light on the desk or table near which 51 he stands. Sir Andrew Clark observes the most jealous watchfulness over his patient. A curious instance of this occurred at Newcastle, when Mr. Gladstone was delivering his address to the great liberal caucus which assembles as the annual meeting of the National Liberal Federation. Sir Andrew had insisted that the orator should confine himself to a speech lasting only an hour. Fearing that his charge would forget all about his promise in the excitement of speaking, the physician, slipped onto the platform and timed Mr. Gladstone, watch in hand. The hour passed, but there was no pause in the torrent of words. Sir Andrew was in despair. At last he pencilled a note to Mr. Morley, beseeching him to insist upon the speech coming to an end. But Mr. Morley would not undertake the responsibility of cutting a great oration, and the result was that Mr. Gladstone stole another half hour from time and his physician. The next day a friend of mine went breathlessly up to Sir Andrew, and asked how the statesman had borne the additional strain. “He did not turn a hair,” was the reply. Practically the only sign of physical failure which is apparent in recent speeches has been that the voice tends to break and die away after about an hour’s exercise, and for a moment the sound of the curiously veiled notes and a glance at the marble pallor of the face gives one the impression that after all Mr. Gladstone is a very, very old man. But there is never anything like a total breakdown. And no one is aware of the enormous stores of physical energy on which the prime minister can draw, who has not sat quite close to him, and measured the wonderful breadth of his shoulders and heard his voice coming straight from his chest in great bouffées of sound. Then you forget all about the heavy wrinkles in the white face, the scanty silver hair, and the patriarchal look of the figure before you.
THE GLADSTONE FAMILY.
WHERE MAN GOT HIS EARS.
By Henry Drummond, LL.D., F.R.S.E., F.G.S.
One of the most humorous sights in nature, less common in America than Europe, is a snail wandering about with a shell on its back. The progenitors of snails once lived in the sea, and when they evolved themselves ashore they carried this relic of the water with them,—an anomaly which, seen to-day, seems as ridiculous as if one were to meet an Indian in Paris with his canoe on his back. But there are more animals besides snails that once lived in the water. If embryology is any guide to the past, nothing is more certain than that the ancient progenitors of Man once lived an aquatic life. As the traveller, wandering in foreign lands, brings back all manner of curios to remind him where he has been—clubs and spears, clothes and pottery, which represent the ways of life of those whom he has met, so the body of Man, returning from its long journey through the animal kingdom, emerges laden with the spoils of its watery pilgrimage. These relics are not mere curiosities; they are as real as the clubs and spears, the clothes and pottery. Like them, they were once a part of life’s vicissitude; they represent organs which have been outgrown; old forms of apparatus long since exchanged for better, yet somehow not yet destroyed by the hand of time. The physical body of Man, so great is the number of these relics, is an old curiosity-shop, a museum of obsolete anatomies, discarded tools, outgrown and aborted organs. All other animals also contain among their useful organs a proportion which are long past their work; and so significant are these rudiments of a former state of things, that anatomists have often expressed their willingness to stake the theory of Evolution upon their presence alone.
Prominent among these vestigial structures, as they are called, are those which smack of the sea. At one time there was nothing else in the world but water-life; all the land animals are late inventions. One reason why animals began in the water is that it is easier to live in the water—anatomically and physiologically cheaper—than to live on the land. The denser element supports the body better, demanding a less supply of muscle and bone; and the perpetual motion of the sea brings the food to the animal, making it unnecessary for the animal to move to the food. This and other correlated circumstances call for far less mechanism in the body, and, as a matter of fact, all the simplest forms of life at the present day are inhabitants of the water.