when I agreed to take the chair, I little knew what an unpleasant job I
had taken in hand. Our member for some reason or other was unable to
attend. I therefore found myself at 7.30 one evening facing two hundred
"red-hot" Radicals, with only one other speaker besides myself to keep
the ball a-rolling. My companion was one of those professional
politicians of the baser sort, who call themselves Unionists because it
pays better for the working-class politician--in just the same way as
ambitious young men among the upper classes sometimes become Radicals on
the strength of there being more opening for them on the "Liberal" side.

Well, this fellow bellowed away in the usual ranting style for about
three-quarters of an hour; his eloquence was great, but truth was "more
honoured in the breach than in the observance." So that when he sat
down, and my turn came, the audience, instead of being convinced, was
fairly rabid. I was very young at that time, and fearfully nervous;
added to which I was never much of a speaker, and, if interrupted at
all, usually lost the thread of my argument.

After a bit they began shouting, "Speak up." The more they shouted the
more mixed I got. When once the spirit of insubordination is roused in
these fellows, it spreads like wild-fire. The din became so great I
could not hear myself speak. In about five minutes there would have been
a row. Suddenly a bright idea occurred to me. "Listen to me," I shouted;
"as you won't hear me speak, perhaps you will allow me to sing you a
song." I had a fairly strong voice, and could go up a good height; so I
gave them "Tom Bowling." Directly I started you could have heard a pin
drop. They gave, me a fair hearing all through; and when, as a final
climax, I finished up with a prolonged B flat--a very loud and long
note, which sounded to me something between a "view holloa" and the
whistle of a penny steamboat, but which came in nicely as a sort of