. My life-work;. anxiety, was not without great compensations—a suc-cession of visits from sympathising friends, leisure for reading andstudy, and freedom from the strain of public meetings. It is goodto be sometimes forcibly withdrawn from the hurly-burly of see things in truer proportion, and feel how much ado is madeabout things that are essentially trifles. As Burke once said onthe death of a friend, What shadows we are, and what shadowswe pursue ! When the dearest on earth hangs between life anddeath, much of what the world calls success appears as the smalldust in the balance. By
. My life-work;. anxiety, was not without great compensations—a suc-cession of visits from sympathising friends, leisure for reading andstudy, and freedom from the strain of public meetings. It is goodto be sometimes forcibly withdrawn from the hurly-burly of see things in truer proportion, and feel how much ado is madeabout things that are essentially trifles. As Burke once said onthe death of a friend, What shadows we are, and what shadowswe pursue ! When the dearest on earth hangs between life anddeath, much of what the world calls success appears as the smalldust in the balance. By the use of an invalid carriage we got upto Liverpool in the middle of January without injury to Mrs. it soon became evident that the change was not attacks supervened, and we had a time of great was only able to attend Parliament intermittently for the firstmonth or two. My heart was not in it. I was summoned backon my way to hear Gladstone introduce his Home Rule Bill. A. MRS. SAMUEL SMITH DEATH OF MRS. SMITH qoi a^ terrible crisis had set in. I arrived to find that rehef had been givenby morphia, and I had to wait from that time with the knowledgethat life was slowly ebbing away. I missed the debate on the intro-duction of the second Home Rule Bill, and did not hear the wonder-ful speech in which the Grand Old Man of 83 expounded it for twoand a quarter hours. As all the world knows, this scheme wasbased on continued representation at Westminster. The debateon its introduction lasted for a week. I just managed to get toLondon to vote on the Welsh Suspensory Bill (the first stage ofDisestablishment), but was recalled by another crisis in Mrs. Smithsillness. I hardly left her from that till the end came on March15, when that most loving and unselfish life came to an end. Fornearly thirty years we had lived in unbroken union, sharing eachothers thoughts and aims. I felt as though a large part of myselfhad been taken away. To Gordon the l
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