and hunt up that shop and hand in my hat to have it ironed. I said when
it came back, "How much to pay?" They said, "Ninepence." In seven years
I have acquired all that worldliness, and I am sorry to be back where I
was seven years ago.

But now I am chaffing and chaffing and chaffing here, and I hope you will
forgive me for that; but when a man stands on the verge of seventy-two
you know perfectly well that he never reached that place without knowing
what this life is heart-breaking bereavement. And so our reverence is
for our dead. We do not forget them; but our duty is toward the living;
and if we can be cheerful, cheerful in spirit, cheerful in speech and in
hope, that is a benefit to those who are around us.

My own history includes an incident which will always connect me with
England in a pathetic way, for when I arrived here seven years ago with
my wife and my daughter--we had gone around the globe lecturing to raise
money to clear off a debt--my wife and one of my daughters started across
the ocean to bring to England our eldest daughter. She was twenty four
years of age and in the bloom of young womanhood, and we were
unsuspecting. When my wife and daughter--and my wife has passed from
this life since--when they had reached mid Atlantic, a cablegram--one of
those heartbreaking cablegrams which we all in our days have to
experience--was put into my hand. It stated that that daughter of ours
had gone to her long sleep. And so, as I say, I cannot always be
cheerful, and I cannot always be chaffing; I must sometimes lay the cap
and bells aside, and recognize that I am of the human race like the rest,
and must have my cares and griefs. And therefore I noticed what Mr.
Birrell said--I was so glad to hear him say it--something that was in the
nature of these verses here at the top of this: